Society in America, Volume 2 (of 2)

by Harriet Martineau

CHAPTER V. MORALS OF ECONOMY.

"And yet of your strength there is and can be no clear feeling, save by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. Between vague, wavering capability, and fixed, indubitable performance, what a difference! A certain inarticulate self-consciousness dwells dimly in us; which only our works can render articulate, and decisively discernible. Our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept 'know thyself,' till it be translated into this partially possible one, 'know what thou canst work at.'"

Sartor Resartus, p. 166. Boston Edition.

The glory of the world passeth away. One kind of worldly glory passes away, and another comes. Like a series of clouds sailing by the moon, and growing dim and dimmer as they go down the sky, are the transitory glories which are only brightened for an age by man's smile: dark vapours, which carry no light within themselves. How many such have floated across the expanse of history, and melted away! It was once a glory to have a power of life and death over a patriarchal family: and how mean does this now appear, in comparison with the power of life and death which every man has over his own intellect! It was once a glory to be feared: how much better is it now esteemed to be loved! It was once a glory to lay down life to escape from one's personal woes: how far higher is it now seen to be to accept those woes as a boon, and to lay down life only for truth;—for God and not for self! The heroes of mankind were once its kings and warriors: we look again now, and find its truest heroes its martyrs, its poets, its artisans; men not buried under pyramids or in cathedrals, but whose sepulchre no man knoweth unto this day. To them the Lord showed the land of promise, and then buried them on the confines. There are two aspects under which every individual man may be regarded: as a solitary being, with inherent powers, and an omnipotent will; a creator, a king, an inscrutable mystery: and again, as a being infinitely connected with all other beings, with none but derived powers, with a heavenly-directed will; a creature, a subject, a transparent medium through which the workings of principles are to be eternally revealed. Both these aspects are true, and therefore reconcilable. The Old World dwelt almost exclusively on the first and meaner aspect: as men rise to inhabit the new heavens and the new earth, they will more and more contemplate the other and sublimer. The old glory of a self-originating power and will is passing away: and it is becoming more and more plain that a man's highest honour lies in becoming as clear a medium as possible for the revelations which are to be made through him: in wiping out every stain, in correcting every flaw by which the light that is in him may be made dimness or deception. It was once a glory to defy or evade the laws of man's physical and moral being; and, in so doing, to encroach upon the rights of others: it is now beginning to be shown that there is a higher honour in recognising and obeying the laws of outward and inward life, and in reverencing instead of appropriating the privileges of other wards of Providence.

In other words, it was once a glory to be idle, and a shame to work,—at least with any member or organ but one,—the brain. Yet it is a law of every man's physical nature that he should work with the limbs: of every man's moral nature, that he should know: and knowledge is to be had only by one method; by bringing the ideal and the actual world into contact, and proving each by the other, with one's own brain and hands for instruments, and not another's. There is no actual knowledge even of one's own life, to be had in any other way. Yet this is the way which men have perversely refused to acknowledge, while every one is more or less compelled to practise it. Those who have been able to get through life with the least possible work have been treated as the happiest: those who have had the largest share imposed upon them have been passively pitied as the most miserable. If the experience of the two could have been visibly or tangibly brought into comparison, the false estimate would have been long ago banished for ever from human calculations. If princes and nobles, who have not worked either in war or in council, men sunk in satiety; if women, shut out of the world of reality, and compelled by usage to endure the corrosion of unoccupied thought, and the decay of unemployed powers, were able to speak fully and truly as they sink into their unearned graves, it would be found that their lives had been one hollow misery, redeemed solely by that degree of action that had been permitted to them, in order that they might, in any wise, live. If the half-starved artisan, if the negro slave, could, when lying down at length to rest, see and exhibit the full vision of their own lives, they would complain far less of too much work than of too little freedom, too little knowledge, too many wounds through their affections to their children, their brethren, their race. They would complain that their work had been of too exclusive a kind; too much in the actual, while it had been attempted to close the ideal from them. Nor are their cases alike. The artisan works too much in one way, while too little in another. The negro slave suffers too much by infliction, and yet more by privation; but he rarely or never works too much, even with the limbs. He knows the evil of toil, the reluctance, the lassitude; but with it he knows also the evil of idleness; the vacuity, the hopelessness. He has neither the privilege of the brute, to exercise himself vigorously upon instinct, for an immediate object, to be gained and forgotten; nor the privilege of the man, to toil, by moral necessity, with some pain, for results which yield an evergrowing pleasure. It is not work which is the curse of the slave: he is rarely so blessed as to know what it is.

If, again, the happiest man who has ever lived on earth, (excepting the Man of Sorrows, whose depth of peace no one will attempt to fathom,) could, in passing into the busier life to come, (to which the present is only the nursery mimicking of human affairs,) communicate to us what has been the true blessedness of his brief passage, it would be found to lie in what he had been enabled to do: not so much blessed in regard to others as to himself; not so much because he had made inventions, (even such a one as printing:) not so much because through him countries will be better governed, men better educated, and some light from the upper world let down into the lower; (for great things as these are, they are sure to be done, if not by him, by another;) but because his actual doing, his joint head and hand-work have revealed to him the truth which lies about him; and so far, and by the only appointed method, invested him with heaven while he was upon earth. Such a one might not be conscious of this as the chief blessedness of his life, (as men are ever least conscious of what is highest and best in themselves:) he might put it in another form, saying that mankind were growing wiser and happier, or that goodness and mercy had followed him all the days of his life, or that he had found that all evil is only an aspect of ultimate good: in some such words of faith or hope he would communicate his inward peace: but the real meaning of the true workman, if spoken for him by a divine voice, (as spoken by the divine voice of his life,) is, as has been said, that his complete toil has enriched him with truth which can be no otherwise obtained, and which neither the world, nor any one in it, except himself, could give, nor any power in heaven or earth could take away.

Mankind becomes more clear-sighted to this fact about honour and blessedness, as time unfolds the sequence of his hieroglyphic scroll; and a transition in the morals and manners of nations is an inevitable consequence, slow as men are in deciphering the picture-writing of the old teacher; unapt as men are in connecting picture with picture, so as to draw thence a truth, and in the truth, a prophecy. We must look to new or renovated communities to see how much has been really learned.

The savage chief, who has never heard the saying "he that would be chief among you, let him be your servant," feels himself covered with glory when he paces along in his saddle, gorgeous with wampum and feathers, while his squaw follows in the dust, bending under the weight of his shelter, his food, and his children. Wise men look upon him with all pity and no envy. Higher and higher in society, the right of the strongest is supposed to involve honour: and physical is placed above moral strength. The work of the limbs, wholly repulsive when separated from that of the head, is devolved upon the weaker, who cannot resist; and hence arises the disgrace of work, and the honour of being able to keep soul and body together, more or less luxuriously, without it. The barbaric conqueror makes his captives work for him. His descendants, who have no prisoners of war to make slaves of, carry off captives of a helpless nation, inferior even to themselves in civilisation. The servile class rises, by almost imperceptible degrees, as the dawn of reason brightens towards day. The classes by whom the hand-work of society is done, arrive at being cared for by those who do the head-work, or no work at all: then they are legislated for, but still as a common or inferior class, favoured, out of pure bounty, with laws, as with soup, which are pronounced "excellent for the poor:" then they begin to open their minds upon legislation for themselves; and a certain lip-honour is paid them, which would be rejected as insult if offered to those who nevertheless think themselves highly meritorious in vouchsafing it.

This is the critical period out of which must arise a new organisation of society. When it comes to this, a new promise blossoms under the feet of the lovers of truth. There are many of the hand-workers now who are on the very borders of the domain of head-work: and, as the encroachments of those who work not at all have, by this time, become seriously injurious to the rights of others, there are many thinkers and persons of learning who are driven over the line, and become hand-workers; for which they, as they usually afterwards declare, can never be sufficiently thankful. There is no drowning the epithalamium with which these two classes celebrate the union of thought and handicraft. Multitudes press in, or are carried in to the marriage feast, and a new era of society has begun. The temporary glory of ease and disgrace of labour pass away like mountain mists, and the clear sublimity of toil grows upon men's sight.

If, in such an era, a new nation begins its career, what should be expected from it?

If the organisation of its society were a matter of will; if it had a disposable moral force, applicable to controllable circumstances, it is probable that the new nation would take after all old nations, and not dare to make, perhaps not dream of making, the explicit avowal, that that which had ever hitherto been a disgrace, except in the eyes of a very few prophets, had now come out to be a clear honour. This would be more, perhaps, than even a company of ten or fifteen millions of men and women would venture to declare, while such words as Quixotic, Revolutionary, Utopian, remain on the tongues which wag the most industriously in the old world. But, it so happens it is never in the power of a whole nation to meet in convention, and agree what their moral condition shall be. They may agree upon laws for the furtherance of what is settled to be honourable, and for the exclusion of some of the law-bred disgraces of the old world: but it is not in their power to dispense at will the subtle radiance of moral glory, any more than to dye their scenery with rainbow hues because they have got hold of a prism. Moral persuasions grow out of preceding circumstances, as institutions do; and conviction is not communicable where the evidence is not of a communicable kind. The advantage of the new nation over the old will be no more than that its individual members are more open to conviction, from being more accessible to evidence, less burdened with antique forms and institutions, and partial privileges, so called. The result will probably be that some members of the new society will follow the ancient fashion of considering work a humiliation; while, upon the whole, labour will be more honoured than it has ever been before.

America is in the singular position of being nearly equally divided between a low degree of the ancient barbarism in relation to labour, and a high degree of the modern enlightenment. Wherever there is a servile class, work is considered a disgrace, unless it bears some other name, and is of an exclusive character. In the free States, labour is more really and heartily honoured than, perhaps, in any other part of the civilised world. The most extraordinary, and least pleasant circumstance in the case is that, while the south ridicules and despises the north for what is its very highest honour, the north feels somewhat uneasy and sore under the contempt. It is true that it is from necessity that every man there works; but, whatever be the cause, the fact is a noble one, worthy of all rejoicing: and it were to be wished that the north could readily and serenely, at all times, and in disregard of all jibes, admit the fact, as matter for thankfulness, that there every man works for his bread with his own head and hands.

How do the two parties in reality spend their days?

In the north, the children all go to school, and work there, more or less. As they grow up, they part off into the greatest variety of employments. The youths must, without exception, work hard; or they had better drown themselves. Whether they are to be lawyers, or otherwise professional; or merchants, manufacturers, farmers, or citizens, they have everything to do for themselves. A very large proportion of them have, while learning their future business, to earn the means of learning. There is much manual labour in the country colleges; much teaching in the vacations done by students. Many a great man in Congress was seen in his boyhood leading his father's horses to water; and, in his youth, guiding the plough in his father's field. There is probably hardly a man in New England who cannot ride, drive, and tend his own horse; scarcely a clergyman, lawyer, or physician, who, if deprived of his profession, could not support himself by manual labour. Nor, on the other hand, is there any farmer or citizen who is not, more or less, a student and thinker. Not only are all capable of discharging their political duty of self-government; but all have somewhat idealised their life. All have looked abroad, at least so far as to understand the foreign relations of their own country: most, I believe, have gone further, and can contemplate the foreign relations of their own being. Some one great mind, at least, has almost every individual entered into sympathy with; some divine, or politician, or poet, who has carried the spirit out beyond the circle of home, State, and country, into the ideal world. It is even possible to trace, in the conversation of some who have the least leisure for reading, the influence of some one of the rich sayings, the diamonds and pearls which have dropped from the lips of genius, to shine in the hearts of all humanity. Some one such saying may be perceived to have moulded the thoughts, and shaped the aims, and become the under-current of the whole life of a thinking and labouring man. Such sayings being hackneyed signifies nothing, while the individuals blessed by them do not know it, and hold them in their inmost hearts, unvexed by hearing them echoed by careless tongues. "Am I not a man and a brother?" "Happy the man whose wish and care," &c. "The breaking waves dashed high," &c. (Mrs. Hemans's Landing of the Pilgrims,) "What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue," (Burke)—these are some of the words which, sinking deep into the hearts of busy men, spring up in a harvest of thoughts and acts.

There are a few young men, esteemed the least happy members of the community, who inherit wealth. The time will come, when the society is somewhat older, when it will be understood that wealth need not preclude work: but at present, there are no individuals so forlorn, in the northern States, as young men of fortune. Men who have shown energy and skill in working their way in society are preferred for political representatives: there is no scientific or literary class, for such individuals to fall into: all the world is busy around them, and they are reduced to the predicament, unhappily the most dreaded of all in the United States, of standing alone. Their method, therefore, is to spend their money as fast as possible, and begin the world like other men. I am stating this as matter of fact; not as being reasonable and right.

As for the women of the northern States, most have the blessing of work, though not of the extent and variety which will hereafter be seen to be necessary for the happiness of their lives. All married women, except the ladies of rich merchants and others, are liable to have their hands full of household occupation, from the uncertainty of domestic service; a topic to be referred to hereafter. Women who do not marry have, in many instances, to work for their support; and, as will be shown in another connexion, under peculiar disadvantages. Work, on the whole, may be considered the rule, and vacuity the exception.[13]

What is life in the slave States, in respect of work?

There are two classes, the servile and the imperious, between whom there is a great gulf fixed. The servile class has not even the benefit of hearty toil. No solemn truths sink down into them, to cheer their hearts, stimulate their minds, and nerve their hands. Their wretched lives are passed between an utter debasement of the will, and a conflict of the will with external force.

The other class is in circumstances as unfavourable as the least happy order of persons in the old world. The means of educating children are so meagre[14] that young people begin life under great disadvantages. The vicious fundamental principle of morals in a slave country, that labour is disgraceful, taints the infant mind with a stain which is as fatal in the world of spirits as the negro tinge is at present in the world of society. It made my heart ache to hear the little children unconsciously uttering thoughts with which no true religion, no true philosophy can coexist. "Do you think I shall work?" "O, you must not touch the poker here." "You must not do this or that for yourself: the negroes will be offended, and it won't do for a lady to do so." "Poor thing! she has to teach: if she had come here, she might have married a rich man, perhaps." "Mamma has so much a-year now, so we have not to do our work at home, or any trouble. 'Tis such a comfort!"—When children at school call everything that pleases them "gentlemanly," and pity all (but slaves) who have to work, and talk of marrying early for an establishment, it is all over with them. A more hopeless state of degradation can hardly be conceived of, however they may ride, and play the harp, and sing Italian, and teach their slaves what they call religion.

"Poor things!" may be said of such, in return. They know little, with their horror of work, of what awaits them. Theirs is destined to be, if their wish of an establishment is fulfilled, a life of toil, irksome and unhonoured. They escape the name; but they are doomed to undergo the worst of the reality. Their husbands are not to be envied, though they do ride on white horses, (the slave's highest conception of bliss,) lie down to repose in hot weather, and spend their hours between the discharge of hospitality and the superintendence of their estates; and the highly honourable and laborious charge of public affairs. But the wives of slave-holders are, as they and their husbands declare, as much slaves as their negroes. If they will not have everything go to rack and ruin around them, they must superintend every household operation, from the cellar to the garrets: for there is nothing that slaves can do well. While the slaves are perpetually at one's heels, lolling against the bed-posts before one rises in the morning, standing behind the chairs, leaning on the sofa, officiously undertaking, and invariably spoiling everything that one had rather do for one's-self, the smallest possible amount of real service is performed. The lady of the house carries her huge bunch of keys, (for every consumable thing must be locked up,) and has to give out, on incessant requests, whatever is wanted for the household. She is for ever superintending, and trying to keep things straight, without the slightest hope of attaining anything like leisure and comfort. What is there in retinue, in the reputation of ease and luxury, which can compensate for toils and cares of this nature? How much happier must be the lot of a village milliner, or of the artisan's wife who sweeps her own floors, and cooks her husband's dinner, than that of the planter's lady with twenty slaves to wait upon her; her sons migrating because work is out of the question, and they have not the means to buy estates; and her daughters with no better prospect than marrying, as she has done, to toil as she does!

Some few of these ladies are among the strongest-minded and most remarkable women I have ever known. There are great draw-backs, (as will be seen hereafter,) but their mental vigour is occasionally proportioned to their responsibility. Women who have to rule over a barbarous society, (small though it be,) to make and enforce laws, provide for all the physical wants, and regulate the entire habits of a number of persons who can in no respect take care of themselves, must be strong and strongly disciplined, if they in any degree discharge this duty. Those who shrink from it become perhaps the weakest women I have anywhere seen: selfishly timid, humblingly dependent, languid in body, and with minds of no reach at all. These two extremes are found in the slave States, in the most striking opposition. It is worthy of note, that I never found there a woman strong enough voluntarily to brave the woes of life in the presence of slavery; nor any woman weak enough to extenuate the vices of the system; each knowing, prior to experience, what those woes and vices are.

There are a few unhappy persons in the slave States, too few, I believe, to be called a class, who strongly exemplify the consequences of such a principle of morals as that work is a disgrace. There are a few, called by the slaves "mean whites;" signifying whites who work with the hands. Where there is a coloured servile class, whose colour has become a disgrace through their servitude, two results are inevitable: that those who have the colour without the servitude are disgraced among the whites; and those who have the servitude without the colour are as deeply disgraced among the coloured. More intensely than white work-people are looked down upon at Port-au-Prince, are the "mean whites" despised by the slaves of the Carolinas. They make the most, of course, of the only opportunity they can ever have of doing what they see their superiors do,—despising their fellow-creatures. No inducement would be sufficient to bring honest, independent men into the constant presence of double-distilled hatred and contempt like this; and the general character of the "mean whites" may therefore be anticipated. They are usually men who have no prospect, no chance elsewhere; the lowest of the low.

When I say that no inducement would be sufficient, I mean no politic inducement. There are inducements of the same force as those which drew martyrs of old into the presence of savage beasts in the amphitheatre, which guided Howard through the gloom of prisons, and strengthened Guyon of Marseilles to offer himself a certain victim to the plague,—there are inducements of such force as this which carry down families to dwell in the midst of contempt and danger, where everything is lost but,—the one object which carries them there. "Mean whites" these friends of the oppressed fugitive may be in the eyes of all around them; but how they stand in the eye of One whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, may some day be revealed. To themselves it is enough that their object is gained. They do not want praise; they are above it: and they have shown that they can do without sympathy. It is enough to commend them to their own peace of heart.

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SECTION I.
MORALS OF SLAVERY.

This title is not written down in a spirit of mockery; though there appears to be a mockery somewhere, when we contrast slavery with the principles and the rule which are the test of all American institutions:—the principles that all men are born free and equal; that rulers derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and the rule of reciprocal justice. This discrepancy between principles and practice needs no more words. But the institution of slavery exists; and what we have to see is what the morals are of the society which is subject to it.

What social virtues are possible in a society of which injustice is the primary characteristic? in a society which is divided into two classes, the servile and the imperious?

The most obvious is Mercy. Nowhere, perhaps, can more touching exercises of mercy be seen than here. It must be remembered that the greater number of slave-holders have no other idea than of holding slaves. Their fathers did it: they themselves have never known the coloured race treated otherwise than as inferior beings, born to work for and to teaze the whites; helpless, improvident, open to no higher inducements than indulgence and praise; capable of nothing but entire dependence. The good affections of slave-holders like these show themselves in the form of mercy; which is as beautiful to witness as mercy, made a substitute for justice, can ever be. I saw endless manifestations of mercy, as well as of its opposite. The thoughtfulness of masters, mistresses, and their children about, not only the comforts, but the indulgences of their slaves, was a frequent subject of admiration with me. Kind masters are liberal in the expenditure of money, and (what is better) of thought, in gratifying the whims and fancies of their negroes. They make large sacrifices occasionally for the social or domestic advantage of their people; and use great forbearance in the exercise of the power conferred upon them by law and custom.

At the time when the cholera was ravaging South Carolina, a wealthy slave-holder there refused to leave the State, as most of his neighbours were doing. He would not consent to take any further care of himself than riding to a distance from his plantation (then overrun by the disease) to sleep. All day he was among his slaves: nursing them with his own hands; putting them into the bath, giving them medicine himself, and cheering their spirits by his presence and his care. He saved them almost all. No one will suppose this one of the ordinary cases where a master has his slaves taken care of as property, not as men. Sordid considerations of that kind must have given way before the terrors of the plague. A far higher strength than that of self-interest was necessary to carry this gentleman through such a work as this; and it was no other than mercy.

Again:—a young man, full of the southern pride, one of whose aims is to have as great a display of negroes as possible, married a young lady who, soon after her marriage, showed an imperious and cruel temper towards her slaves. Her husband gently remonstrated. She did not mend. He warned her, that he would not allow beings, for whose comfort he was responsible, to be oppressed; and that, if she compelled him to it, he would deprive her of the power she misused. Still she did not mend. He one day came and told her that he had sold all his domestic slaves, for their own sakes. He told her that he would always give her money enough to hire free service, when it was to be had; and that when it was not, he would cheerfully bear, and help her to bear, the domestic inconveniences which must arise from their having no servants. He kept his word. It rarely happens that free service can be hired; and this proud gentleman assists his wife's labours with his own hands; and (what is more) endures with all cheerfulness the ignominy of having no slaves.

Nothing struck me more than the patience of slave-owners. In this virtue they probably surpass the whole Christian world;—I mean in their patience with their slaves; for one cannot much praise their patience with the abolitionists, or with the tariff; or in some other cases of political vexation. When I considered how they love to be called "fiery southerners," I could not but marvel at their mild forbearance under the hourly provocations to which they are liable in their homes.[15] It is found that such a degree of this virtue can be obtained only by long habit. Persons from New England, France, or England, becoming slave-holders, are found to be the most severe masters and mistresses, however good their tempers may always have appeared previously. They cannot, like the native proprietor, sit waiting half an hour for the second course, or see everything done in the worst possible manner; their rooms dirty, their property wasted, their plans frustrated, their infants slighted, themselves deluded by artifices,—they cannot, like the native proprietor, endure all this unruffled. It seems to me that every slave-holder's temper is subjected to a discipline which must either ruin or perfect it. While we know that many tempers are thus ruined, and must mourn for the unhappy creatures who cannot escape from their tyranny, it is evident, on the other hand, that many tempers are to be met with which should shame down and silence for ever the irritability of some whose daily life is passed under circumstances of comparative ease.

This mercy, indulgence, patience, was often pleaded to me in defence of the system, or in aggravation of the faults of intractable slaves. The fallacy of this is so gross as not to need exposure anywhere but on the spot. I was heart-sick of being told of the ingratitude of slaves, and weary of explaining that indulgence can never atone for injury: that the extremest pampering, for a life-time, is no equivalent for rights withheld, no reparation for irreparable injustice. What are the greatest possible amounts of finery, sweetmeats, dances, gratuities, and kind words and looks, in exchange for political, social, and domestic existence? for body and spirit? Is it not true that the life is more than meat, and the body than raiment?

This fallacious plea was urged upon me by three different persons, esteemed enlightened and religious, in relation to one case. The case was this. A lady of fortune carried into her husband's establishment, when she married, several slaves, and among them a girl two years younger than herself, who had been brought up under her, and who was employed as her own maid. The little slaves are accustomed to play freely with the children of the family—a practice which was lauded to me, but which never had any beauty in my eyes, seeing, as I did, the injury to the white children from unrestricted intercourse with the degraded race, and looking forward as I did to the time when they must separate into the servile and imperious. Mrs. —— had been unusually indulgent to this girl, having allowed her time and opportunity for religious and other instruction, and favoured her in every way. One night, when the girl was undressing her, the lady expressed her fondness for her, and said, among other things: "When I die you shall be free;"—a dangerous thing to say to a slave only two years younger than herself. In a short time the lady was taken ill,—with a strange, mysterious illness, which no doctor could alleviate. One of her friends, who suspected foul play, took the sufferer entirely under her own charge, when she seemed to be dying. She revived; and as soon as she was well enough to have a will of her own again, would be waited on by no one but her favourite slave. She grew worse. She alternated thus, for some time, according as she was under the care of this slave or of her friend. At last, the friend excluded from her chamber every one but the physicians: took in the medicines at the room door from the hands of the slave, and locked them up. They were all analysed by a physician, and arsenic found in every one of them. The lady partially recovered; but I was shocked at the traces of suffering in her whole appearance. The girl's guilt was brought clearly home to her. There never was a case of more cruel, deliberate intention to murder. If ever slave deserved the gallows, (which ought to be questionable to the most decided minds,) this girl did. What was done? The lady was tenderhearted, and could not bear to have her hanged. This was natural enough; but what did she therefore do? keep her under her own eye, that she might at least poison nobody else, and perhaps be touched and reclaimed by the clemency of the person she would have murdered? No. The lady sold her.

I was actually called upon to admire the lady's conduct; and was asked whether the ingratitude of the girl was not inconceivable, and her hypocrisy too; for she used to lecture her mistress and her mistress's friends for being so irreligious as to go to parties on Saturday nights, when they should have been preparing their minds for Sunday. Was not the hypocrisy of the girl inconceivable? and her ingratitude for her mistress's favours? No. The girl had no other idea of religion,—could have no other than that it consists in observances, and, wicked as she was, her wickedness could not be called ingratitude, for she was more injured than favoured, after all. All indulgences that could be heaped upon her were still less than her due, and her mistress remained infinitely her debtor.

Little can be said of the purity of manners of the whites of the south; but there is purity. Some few examples of domestic fidelity may be found: few enough, by the confession of residents on the spot; but those individuals who have resisted the contagion of the vice amidst which they dwell are pure. Every man who resides on his plantation may have his harem, and has every inducement of custom, and of pecuniary gain,[16] to tempt him to the common practice. Those who, notwithstanding, keep their homes undefiled may be considered as of incorruptible purity.

Here, alas! ends my catalogue of the virtues which are of possible exercise by slave-holders towards their labourers. The inherent injustice of the system extinguishes all others, and nourishes a whole harvest of false morals towards the rest of society.

The personal oppression of the negroes is the grossest vice which strikes a stranger in the country. It can never be otherwise when human beings are wholly subjected to the will of other human beings, who are under no other external control than the law which forbids killing and maiming;—a law which it is difficult to enforce in individual cases. A fine slave was walking about in Columbia, South Carolina, when I was there, nearly helpless and useless from the following causes. His master was fond of him, and the slave enjoyed the rare distinction of never having been flogged. One day, his master's child, supposed to be under his care at the time, fell down and hurt itself. The master flew into a passion, ordered the slave to be instantly flogged, and would not hear a single word the man had to say. As soon as the flogging was over, the slave went into the back yard, where there was an axe and a block, and struck off the upper half of his right hand. He went and held up the bleeding hand before his master, saying, "You have mortified me, so I have made myself useless. Now you must maintain me as long as I live." It came out that the child had been under the charge of another person.

There are, as is well known throughout the country, houses in the free States which are open to fugitive slaves, and where they are concealed till the search for them is over. I know some of the secrets of such places; and can mention two cases, among many, of runaways, which show how horrible is the tyranny which the slave system authorises men to inflict on each other. A negro had found his way to one of these friendly houses; and had been so skilfully concealed, that repeated searches by his master, (who had followed for the purpose of recovering him,) and by constables, had been in vain. After three weeks of this seclusion, the negro became weary, and entreated of his host to be permitted to look out of the window. His host strongly advised him to keep quiet, as it was pretty certain that his master had not given him up. When the host had left him, however, the negro came out of his hiding-place, and went to the window. He met the eye of his master, who was looking up from the street. The poor slave was obliged to return to his bondage.

A young negress had escaped in like manner; was in like manner concealed; and was alarmed by constables, under the direction of her master, entering the house in pursuit of her, when she had had reason to believe that the search was over. She flew up stairs to her chamber in the third story, and drove a heavy article of furniture against the door. The constables pushed in, notwithstanding, and the girl leaped from the window into the paved street. Her master looked at her as she lay, declared she would never be good for anything again, and went back into the south. The poor creature, her body bruised, and her limbs fractured, was taken up, and kindly nursed; and she is now maintained in Boston, in her maimed condition, by the charity of some ladies there.

The following story has found its way into the northern States (as few such stories do) from the circumstance that a New Hampshire family are concerned in it. It has excited due horror wherever it is known; and it is to be hoped that it will lead to the exposure of more facts of the same kind, since it is but too certain that they are common.

A New Hampshire gentleman went down into Louisiana, many years ago, to take a plantation. He pursued the usual method; borrowing money largely to begin with, paying high interest, and clearing off his debt, year by year, as his crops were sold. He followed another custom there; taking a Quadroon wife: a mistress, in the eye of the law, since there can be no legal marriage between whites and persons of any degree of colour: but, in nature and in reason, the woman he took home was his wife. She was a well-principled, amiable, well-educated woman; and they lived happily together for twenty years. She had only the slightest possible tinge of colour. Knowing the law that the children of slaves are to follow the fortunes of the mother, she warned her husband that she was not free, an ancestress having been a slave, and the legal act of manumission having never been performed. The husband promised to look to it: but neglected it. At the end of twenty years, one died, and the other shortly followed, leaving daughters; whether two or three, I have not been able to ascertain with positive certainty; but I have reason to believe three, of the ages of fifteen, seventeen, and eighteen: beautiful girls, with no perceptible mulatto tinge. The brother of their father came down from New Hampshire to settle the affairs; and he supposed, as every one else did, that the deceased had been wealthy. He was pleased with his nieces, and promised to carry them back with him into New Hampshire, and (as they were to all appearance perfectly white) to introduce them into the society which by education they were fitted for. It appeared, however, that their father had died insolvent. The deficiency was very small: but it was necessary to make an inventory of the effects, to deliver to the creditors. This was done by the brother,—the executor. Some of the creditors called on him, and complained that he had not delivered in a faithful inventory. He declared he had. No: the number of slaves was not accurately set down: he had omitted the daughters. The executor was overwhelmed with horror, and asked time for thought. He went round among the creditors, appealing to their mercy: but they answered that these young ladies were "a first-rate article," too valuable to be relinquished. He next offered, (though he had himself six children, and very little money,) all he had for the redemption of his nieces; alleging that it was more than they would bring in the market for house or field labour. This was refused with scorn. It was said that there were other purposes for which the girls would bring more than for field or house labour. The uncle was in despair, and felt strongly tempted to wish their death rather than their surrender to such a fate as was before them. He told them, abruptly, what was their prospect. He declares that he never before beheld human grief; never before heard the voice of anguish. They never ate, nor slept, nor separated from each other, till the day when they were taken into the New Orleans slave-market. There they were sold, separately, at high prices, for the vilest of purposes: and where each is gone, no one knows. They are, for the present, lost. But they will arise to the light in the day of retribution.

It is a common boast in the south that there is less vice in their cities than in those of the north. This can never, as a matter of fact, have been ascertained; as the proceedings of slave households are, or may be, a secret: and in the north, what licentiousness there is may be detected. But such comparisons are bad. Let any one look at the positive licentiousness of the south, and declare if, in such a state of society, there can be any security for domestic purity and peace. The Quadroon connexions in New Orleans are all but universal, as I was assured on the spot by ladies who cannot be mistaken. The history of such connexions is a melancholy one: but it ought to be made known while there are any who boast of the superior morals of New Orleans, on account of the decent quietness of the streets and theatres.

The Quadroon girls of New Orleans are brought up by their mothers to be what they have been; the mistresses of white gentlemen. The boys are some of them sent to France; some placed on land in the back of the State; and some are sold in the slave-market. They marry women of a somewhat darker colour than their own; the women of their own colour objecting to them, "ils sont si dégoutants!" The girls are highly educated, externally, and are, probably, as beautiful and accomplished a set of women as can be found. Every young man early selects one, and establishes her in one of those pretty and peculiar houses, whole rows of which may be seen in the Remparts. The connexion now and then lasts for life: usually for several years. In the latter case, when the time comes for the gentleman to take a white wife, the dreadful news reaches his Quadroon partner, either by a letter entitling her to call the house and furniture her own, or by the newspaper which announces his marriage. The Quadroon ladies are rarely or never known to form a second connexion. Many commit suicide: more die brokenhearted. Some men continue the connexion after marriage. Every Quadroon woman believes that her partner will prove an exception to the rule of desertion. Every white lady believes that her husband has been an exception to the rule of seduction.

What security for domestic purity and peace there can be where every man has had two connexions, one of which must be concealed; and two families, whose existence must not be known to each other; where the conjugal relation begins in treachery, and must be carried on with a heavy secret in the husband's breast, no words are needed to explain. If this is the system which is boasted of as a purer than ordinary state of morals, what is to be thought of the ordinary state? It can only be hoped that the boast is an empty one.

There is no occasion to explain the management of the female slaves on estates where the object is to rear as many as possible, like stock, for the southern market: nor to point out the boundless licentiousness caused by the practice: a practice which wrung from the wife of a planter, in the bitterness of her heart, the declaration that a planter's wife was only "the chief slave of the harem." Mr. Madison avowed that the licentiousness of Virginian plantations stopped just short of destruction; and that it was understood that the female slaves were to become mothers at fifteen.

A gentleman of the highest character, a southern planter, observed, in conversation with a friend, that little was known, out of bounds, of the reasons of the new laws by which emancipation was made so difficult as it is. He said that the very general connexion of white gentlemen with their female slaves introduced a mulatto race whose numbers would become dangerous, if the affections of their white parents were permitted to render them free. The liberty of emancipating them was therefore abolished, while that of selling them remained. There are persons who weakly trust to the force of the parental affection for putting an end to slavery, when the amalgamation of the races shall have gone so far as to involve a sufficient number! I actually heard this from the lips of a clergyman in the south. Yet these planters, who sell their own offspring to fill their purses, who have such offspring for the sake of filling their purses, dare to raise the cry of "amalgamation" against the abolitionists of the north, not one of whom has, as far as evidence can show, conceived the idea of a mixture of the races. It is from the south, where this mixture is hourly encouraged, that the canting and groundless reproach has come. I met with no candid southerner who was not full of shame at the monstrous hypocrisy.

It is well known that the most savage violences that are now heard of in the world take place in the southern and western States of America. Burning alive, cutting the heart out, and sticking it on the point of a knife, and other such diabolical deeds, the result of the deepest hatred of which the human heart is capable, are heard of only there. The frequency of such deeds is a matter of dispute, which time will settle.[17] The existence of such deeds is a matter of no dispute. Whether two or twenty such deeds take place in a year, their perpetration testifies to the existence of such hatred as alone could prompt them. There is no doubt in my mind as to the immediate causes of such outrages. They arise out of the licentiousness of manners. The negro is exasperated by being deprived of his wife,—by being sent out of the way that his master may take possession of his home. He stabs his master; or, if he cannot fulfil his desire of vengeance, he is a dangerous person, an object of vengeance in return, and destined to some cruel fate. If the negro attempts to retaliate, and defile the master's home, the faggots are set alight about him. Much that is dreadful ensues from the negro being subject to toil and the lash: but I am confident that the licentiousness of the masters is the proximate cause of society in the south and south-west being in such a state that nothing else is to be looked for than its being dissolved into its elements, if man does not soon cease to be called the property of man. This dissolution will never take place through the insurrection of the negroes; but by the natural operation of vice. But the process of demoralisation will be stopped, I have no doubt, before it reaches that point. There is no reason to apprehend serious insurrection; for the negroes are too degraded to act in concert, or to stand firm before the terrible face of the white man. Like all deeply-injured classes of persons, they are desperate and cruel, on occasion, kindly as their nature is; but as a class, they have no courage. The voice of a white, even of a lady, if it were authoritative, would make a whole regiment of rebellious slaves throw down their arms and flee. Poison is the weapon that suits them best: then the knife, in moments of exasperation. They will never take the field, unless led on by free blacks. Desperate as the state of society is, it will be rectified, probably, without bloodshed.

It may be said that it is doing an injustice to cite extreme cases of vice as indications of the state of society. I do not think so, as long as such cases are so common as to strike the observation of a mere passing stranger; to say nothing of their incompatibility with a decent and orderly fulfilment of the social relations. Let us, however, see what is the very best state of things. Let us take the words and deeds of some of the most religious, refined, and amiable members of society. It was this aspect of affairs which grieved me more, if possible, than the stormier one which I have presented. The coarsening and hardening of mind and manners among the best; the blunting of the moral sense among the most conscientious, gave me more pain than the stabbing, poisoning, and burning. A few examples which will need no comment, will suffice.

Two ladies, the distinguishing ornaments of a very superior society in the south, are truly unhappy about slavery, and opened their hearts freely to me upon the grief which it caused them,—the perfect curse which they found it. They need no enlightening on this, nor any stimulus to acquit themselves as well as their unhappy circumstances allow. They one day pressed me for a declaration of what I should do in their situation. I replied that I would give up everything, go away with my slaves, settle them, and stay by them in some free place. I had said, among other things, that I dare not stay there,—on my own account,—from moral considerations. "What, not if you had no slaves?" "No." "Why?" "I could not trust myself to live where I must constantly witness the exercise of irresponsible power." They made no reply at the moment: but each found occasion to tell me, some days afterwards, that she had been struck to the heart by these words: the consideration I mentioned having never occurred to her before!

Madame Lalaurie, the person who was mobbed at New Orleans, on account of her fiendish cruelty to her slaves,—a cruelty so excessive as to compel the belief that she was mentally deranged, though her derangement could have taken such a direction nowhere but in a slave country;—this person was described to me as having been "very pleasant to whites."

A common question put to me by amiable ladies was, "Do not you find the slaves generally very happy?" They never seemed to have been asked, or to have asked themselves, the question with which I replied:—"Would you be happy with their means?"

One sultry morning, I was sitting with a friend, who was giving me all manner of information about her husband's slaves, both in the field and house; how she fed and clothed them; what indulgences they were allowed; what their respective capabilities were; and so forth. While we were talking, one of the house-slaves passed us. I observed that she appeared superior to all the rest; to which my friend assented. "She is A.'s wife?" said I. "We call her A.'s wife, but she has never been married to him. A. and she came to my husband, five years ago, and asked him to let them marry: but he could not allow it, because he had not made up his mind whether to sell A.; and he hates parting husband and wife." "How many children have they?" "Four." "And they are not married yet?" "No; my husband has never been able to let them marry. He certainly will not sell her: and he has not determined yet whether he shall sell A."

Another friend told me the following story. B. was the best slave in her husband's possession. B. fell in love with C., a pretty girl, on a neighbouring estate, who was purchased to be B.'s wife. C.'s temper was jealous and violent; and she was always fancying that B. showed attention to other girls. Her master warned her to keep her temper, or she should be sent away. One day, when the master was dining out, B. came to him, trembling, and related that C. had, in a fit of jealousy, aimed a blow at his head with an axe, and nearly struck him. The master went home, and told C. that her temper could no longer be borne with, and she must go. He offered her the choice of being sold to a trader, and carried to New Orleans, or of being sent to field labour on a distant plantation. She preferred being sold to the trader; who broke his promise of taking her to New Orleans, and disposed of her to a neighbouring proprietor. C. kept watch over her husband, declaring that she would be the death of any girl whom B. might take to wife. "And so," said my informant, "poor B. was obliged to walk about in single blessedness for some time; till, last summer, happily, C. died."—"Is it possible," said I, "that you pair and part these people like brutes?"—The lady looked surprised, and asked what else could be done.

One day at dinner, when two slaves were standing behind our chairs, the lady of the house was telling me a ludicrous story, in which a former slave of hers was one of the personages, serving as a butt on the question of complexion. She seemed to recollect that slaves were listening; for she put in, "D. was an excellent boy," (the term for male slaves of every age.) "We respected him very highly as an excellent boy. We respected him almost as much as if he had been a white. But, &c.——"

A southern lady, of fair reputation for refinement and cultivation, told the following story in the hearing of a company, among whom were some friends of mine. She spoke with obvious unconsciousness that she was saying anything remarkable: indeed such unconsciousness was proved by her telling the story at all. She had possessed a very pretty mulatto girl, of whom she declared herself fond. A young man came to stay at her house, and fell in love with the girl. "She came to me," said the lady, "for protection; which I gave her." The young man went away, but after some weeks, returned, saying he was so much in love with the girl that he could not live without her. "I pitied the young man," concluded the lady; "so I sold the girl to him for 1,500 dollars."

I repeatedly heard the preaching of a remarkably liberal man, of a free and kindly spirit, in the south. His last sermon, extempore, was from the text "Cast all your care upon him, for He careth for you." The preacher told us, among other things, that God cares for all,—for the meanest as well as the mightiest. "He cares for that coloured person," said he, pointing to the gallery where the people of colour sit,—"he cares for that coloured person as well as for the wisest and best of you whites." This was the most wanton insult I had ever seen offered to a human being; and it was with difficulty that I refrained from walking out of the church. Yet no one present to whom I afterwards spoke of it seemed able to comprehend the wrong. "Well!" said they: "does not God care for the coloured people?"

Of course, in a society where things like these are said and done by its choicest members, there is a prevalent unconsciousness of the existing wrong. The daily and hourly plea is of good intentions towards the slaves; of innocence under the aspersions of foreigners. They are as sincere in the belief that they are injured as their visitors are cordial in their detestation of the morals of slavery. Such unconsciousness of the milder degrees of impurity and injustice as enables ladies and clergymen of the highest character to speak and act as I have related, is a sufficient evidence of the prevalent grossness of morals. One remarkable indication of such blindness was the almost universal mention of the state of the Irish to me, as a worse case than American slavery. I never attempted, of course, to vindicate the state of Ireland: but I was surprised to find no one able, till put in the way, to see the distinction between political misgovernment and personal slavery: between exasperating a people by political insult, and possessing them, like brutes, for pecuniary profit. The unconsciousness of guilt is the worst of symptoms, where there are means of light to be had. I shall have to speak hereafter of the state of religion throughout the country. It is enough here to say that if, with the law of liberty and the gospel of peace and purity within their hands, the inhabitants of the south are unconscious of the low state of the morals of society, such blindness proves nothing so much as how far that which is highest and purest may be confounded with what is lowest and foulest, when once the fatal attempt has been entered upon to make them co-exist. From their co-existence, one further step may be taken; and in the south has been taken; the making the high and pure a sanction for the low and foul. Of this, more hereafter.

The degradation of the women is so obvious a consequence of the evils disclosed above, that the painful subject need not be enlarged on. By the degradation of women, I do not mean to imply any doubt of the purity of their manners. There are reasons, plain enough to the observer, why their manners should be even peculiarly pure. They are all married young, from their being out-numbered by the other sex: and there is ever present an unfortunate servile class of their own sex to serve the purposes of licentiousness, so as to leave them untempted. Their degradation arises, not from their own conduct, but from that of all other parties about them. Where the generality of men carry secrets which their wives must be the last to know; where the busiest and more engrossing concerns of life must wear one aspect to the one sex, and another to the other, there is an end to all wholesome confidence and sympathy, and woman sinks to be the ornament of her husband's house, the domestic manager of his establishment, instead of being his all-sufficient friend. I am speaking not only of what I suppose must necessarily be; but of what I have actually seen. I have seen, with heart-sorrow, the kind politeness, the gallantry, so insufficient to the loving heart, with which the wives of the south are treated by their husbands. I have seen the horror of a woman's having to work,—to exert the faculties which her Maker gave her;—the eagerness to ensure her unearned ease and rest; the deepest insult which can be offered to an intelligent and conscientious woman. I know the tone of conversation which is adopted towards women; different in its topics and its style from that which any man would dream of offering to any other man. I have heard the boast of the chivalrous consideration in which women are held throughout their woman's paradise; and seen something of the anguish of crushed pride, of the conflict of bitter feelings with which such boasts have been listened to by those whose aspirations teach them the hollowness of the system. The gentlemen are all the while unaware that women are not treated in the best possible manner among them: and they will remain thus blind as long as licentious intercourse with the lowest of the sex unfits them for appreciating the highest. Whenever their society shall take rank according to moral rather than physical considerations; whenever they shall rise to crave sympathy in the real objects of existence; whenever they shall begin to inquire what human life is, and wherefore, and to reverence it accordingly, they will humble themselves in shame for their abuse of the right of the strongest; for those very arrangements and observances which now constitute their boast. A lady who, brought up elsewhere to use her own faculties, and employ them on such objects as she thinks proper, and who has more knowledge and more wisdom than perhaps any gentleman of her acquaintance, told me of the disgust with which she submits to the conversation which is addressed to her, under the idea of being fit for her; and how she solaces herself at home, after such provocation, with the silent sympathy of books. A father of promising young daughters, whom he sees likely to be crushed by the system, told me, in a tone of voice which I shall never forget, that women there might as well be turned into the street, for anything they are fit for. There are reasonable hopes that his children may prove an exception. One gentleman who declares himself much interested in the whole subject, expresses his horror of the employment of women in the northern States, for useful purposes. He told me that the same force of circumstances which, in the region he inhabits, makes men independent, increases the dependence of women, and will go on to increase it. Society is there, he declared, "always advancing towards orientalism." "There are but two ways in which woman can be exercised to the extent of her powers; by genius and by calamity, either of which may strengthen her to burst her conventional restraints. The first is too rare a circumstance to afford any basis for speculation: and may Heaven avert the last!" O, may Heaven hasten it! would be the cry of many hearts, if these be indeed the conditions of woman's fulfilling the purposes of her being. There are, I believe, some who would scarcely tremble to see their houses in flames, to hear the coming tornado, to feel the threatening earthquake, if these be indeed the messengers who must open their prison doors, and give their heaven-born spirits the range of the universe. God has given to them the universe, as to others: man has caged them in one corner of it, and dreads their escape from their cage, while man does that which he would not have woman hear of. He puts genius out of sight, and deprecates calamity. He has not, however, calculated all the forces in nature. If he had, he would hardly venture to hold either negroes or women as property, or to trust to the absence of genius and calamity.

One remarkable warning has been vouchsafed to him. A woman of strong mind, whose strenuous endeavours to soften the woes of slavery to her own dependents, failed to satisfy her conscience and relieve her human affections, her shaken the blood-slaked dust from her feet, and gone to live where every man can call himself his own: and not only to live, but to work there, and to pledge herself to death, if necessary, for the overthrow of the system which she abhors in proportion to her familiarity with it. Whether we are to call her Genius or Calamity, or by her own honoured name of Angelina Grimke, certain it is that she is rousing into life and energy many women who were unconscious of genius, and unvisited by calamity, but who carry honest and strong human hearts. This lady may ere long be found to have materially checked the "advance towards orientalism."

Of course, the children suffer, perhaps the most fatally of all, under the slave system. What can be expected from little boys who are brought up to consider physical courage the highest attribute of manhood; pride of section and of caste its loftiest grace; the slavery of a part of society essential to the freedom of the rest; justice of less account than generosity; and humiliation in the eyes of men the most intolerable of evils? What is to be expected of little girls who boast of having got a negro flogged for being impertinent to them, and who are surprised at the "ungentlemanly" conduct of a master who maims his slave? Such lessons are not always taught expressly. Sometimes the reverse is expressly taught. But this is what the children in a slave country necessarily learn from what passes around them; just as the plainest girls in a school grow up to think personal beauty the most important of all endowments, in spite of daily assurances that the charms of the mind are all that are worth regarding.

The children of slave countries learn more and worse still. It is nearly impossible to keep them from close intercourse with the slaves; and the attempt is rarely made. The generality of slaves are as gross as the total absence of domestic sanctity might be expected to render them. They do not dream of any reserves with children. The consequences are inevitable. The woes of mothers from this cause are such that, if this "peculiar domestic institution" were confided to their charge, I believe they would accomplish its overthrow with an energy and wisdom that would look more like inspiration than orientalism. Among the incalculable forces in nature is the grief of mothers weeping for the corruption of their children.

One of the absolutely inevitable results of slavery is a disregard of human rights; an inability even to comprehend them. Probably the southern gentry, who declare that the presence of slavery enhances the love of freedom; that freedom can be duly estimated only where a particular class can appropriate all social privileges; that, to use the words of one of them, "they know too much of slavery to be slaves themselves," are sincere enough in such declarations; and if so, it follows that they do not know what freedom is. They may have the benefit of the alternative,—of not knowing what freedom is, and being sincere; or of knowing what freedom is, and not being sincere. I am disposed to think that the first is the more common case.

One reason for my thinking so is, that I usually found in conversation in the south, that the idea of human rights was—sufficient subsistence in return for labour. This was assumed as the definition of human rights on which we were to argue the case of the slave. When I tried the definition by the golden rule, I found that even that straight, simple rule had become singularly bent in the hands of those who profess to acknowledge and apply it. A clergyman preached from the pulpit the following application of it, which is echoed unhesitatingly by the most religious of the slave-holders:—"Treat your slaves as you would wish to be treated if you were a slave yourself." I verily believe that hundreds, or thousands, do not see that this is not an honest application of the rule; so blinded are they by custom to the fact that the negro is a man and a brother.

Another of my reasons for supposing that the gentry of the south do not know what freedom is, is that many seem unconscious of the state of coercion in which they themselves are living; coercion, not only from the incessant fear of which I have before spoken,—a fear which haunts their homes, their business, and their recreations; coercion, not only from their fear, and from their being dependent for their hourly comforts upon the extinguished or estranged will of those whom they have injured; but coercion also from their own laws. The laws against the press are as peremptory as in the most despotic countries of Europe:[18] as may be seen in the small number and size, and poor quality, of the newspapers of the south. I never saw, in the rawest villages of the youngest States, newspapers so empty and poor as those of New Orleans. It is curious that, while the subject of the abolition of slavery in the British colonies was necessarily a very interesting one throughout the southern States, I met with planters who did not know that any compensation had been paid by the British nation to the West Indian proprietors. The miserable quality of the southern newspapers, and the omission from them of the subjects on which the people most require information, will go far to account for the people's delusions on their own affairs, as compared with those of the rest of the world, and for their boasts of freedom, which probably arise from their knowing of none which is superior. They see how much more free they are than their own slaves; but are not generally aware what liberty is where all are free. In 1834, the number of newspapers was, in the State of New York, 267; in Louisiana, 31; in Massachusetts, 108; in South Carolina, 19; in Pennsylvania, 220; in Georgia, 29.

What is to be thought of the freedom of gentlemen subject to the following law? "Any person or persons who shall attempt to teach any free person of colour, or slave, to spell, read, or write, shall, upon conviction thereof by indictment, be fined in a sum not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, nor more than five hundred dollars."[19]

What is to be thought of the freedom of gentlemen who cannot emancipate their own slaves, except by the consent of the legislature; and then only under very strict conditions, which make the deed almost impracticable? It has been mentioned that during a temporary suspension of the laws against emancipation in Virginia, 10,000 slaves were freed in nine years; and that, as the institution seemed in peril, the masters were again coerced. It is pleaded that the masters themselves were the repealers and re-enactors of these laws. True: and thus it appears that they thought it necessary to deprive each other of a liberty which a great number seem to have made use of themselves, while they could. No high degree of liberty, or of the love of it, is to be seen here. The laws which forbid emancipation are felt to be cruelly galling, throughout the south. I heard frequent bitter complaints of them. They are the invariable plea urged by individuals to excuse their continuing to hold slaves. Such individuals are either sincere in these complaints, or they are not. If they are not, they must be under some deplorable coercion which compels so large a multitude to hypocrisy. If they are sincere, they possess the common republican means of getting tyrannical laws repealed: and why do they not use them? If these laws are felt to be oppressive, why is no voice heard denouncing them in the legislatures? If men complainingly, but voluntarily, submit to laws which bind the conscience, little can be said of their love of liberty. If they submit involuntarily, nothing can be said for their possession of it.

What, again, is to be thought of the freedom of citizens who are liable to lose caste because they follow conscience in a case where the perversity of the laws places interest on the side of conscience, and public opinion against it? I will explain. In a southern city, I saw a gentleman who appeared to have all the outward requisites for commanding respect. He was very wealthy, had been governor of the State, and was an eminent and peculiar benefactor to the city. I found he did not stand well. As some pains were taken to impress me with this, I inquired the cause. His character was declared to be generally good. I soon got at the particular exception, which I was anxious to do only because I saw that it was somehow of public concern. While this gentleman was governor, there was an insurrection of slaves. His own slaves were accused. He did not believe them guilty, and refused to hang them. This was imputed to an unwillingness to sacrifice his property. He was thus in a predicament which no one can be placed in, except where man is held as property. He must either hang his slaves, believing them innocent, and keep his character; or he must, by saving their lives, lose his own character. How the case stood with this gentleman, is fully known only to his own heart. His conduct claims the most candid construction. But, this being accorded as his due, what can be thought of the freedom of a republican thus circumstanced?

Passing over the perils, physical and moral, in which those are involved who live in a society where recklessness of life is treated with leniency, and physical courage stands high in the list of virtues and graces,—perils which abridge a man's liberty of action and of speech in a way which would be felt to be intolerable if the restraint were not adorned by the false name of Honour,—it is only necessary to look at the treatment of the abolitionists by the south, by both legislatures and individuals, to see that no practical understanding of liberty exists there.

Upon a mere vague report, or bare suspicion, persons travelling through the south have been arrested, imprisoned, and, in some cases, flogged or otherwise tortured, on pretence that such persons desired to cause insurrection among the slaves. More than one innocent person has been hanged; and the device of terrorism has been so practised as to deprive the total number of persons who avowedly hold a certain set of opinions, of their constitutional liberty of traversing the whole country. It was declared by some liberal-minded gentlemen of South Carolina, after the publication of Dr. Channing's work on Slavery, that if Dr. Channing were to enter South Carolina with a body-guard of 20,000 men, he could not come out alive. I have seen the lithographic prints, transmitted in letters to abolitionists, representing the individual to whom the letter was sent hanging on a gallows. I have seen the hand-bills, purporting to be issued by Committees of Vigilance, offering enormous rewards for the heads, or for the ears, of prominent abolitionists.

If it be said that these acts are attributable to the ignorant wrath of individuals only, it may be asked whence arose the Committees of Vigilance, which were last year sitting throughout the south and west, on the watch for any incautious person who might venture near them, with anti-slavery opinions in his mind? How came it that high official persons sat on these committees? How is it that some governors of southern States made formal application to governors of the northern States to procure the dispersion of anti-slavery societies, the repression of discussion, and the punishment of the promulgators of abolition opinions? How is it that the governor of South Carolina last year recommended the summary execution, without benefit of clergy, of all persons caught within the limits of the State, holding avowed anti-slavery opinions; and that every sentiment of the governor's was endorsed by a select committee of the legislature?

All this proceeds from an ignorance of the first principles of liberty. It cannot be from a mere hypocritical disregard of such principles; for proud men, who boast a peculiar love of liberty and aptitude for it, would not voluntarily make themselves so ridiculous as they appear by these outrageous proceedings. Such blustering is so hopeless, and, if not sincere, so purposeless, that no other supposition is left than that they have lost sight of the fundamental principles of both their federal and State constitutions, and do now actually suppose that their own freedom lies in crushing all opposition to their own will. No pretence of evidence has been offered of any further offence against them than the expression of obnoxious opinions. There is no plea that any of their laws have been violated, except those recently enacted to annihilate freedom of speech and the press: laws which can in no case be binding upon persons out of the limits of the States for which these new laws are made.

The amended constitution of Virginia, of 1830, provides that the legislature shall not pass "any law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press." North and South Carolina and Georgia decree that the freedom of the press shall be preserved inviolate; the press being the grand bulwark of liberty. The constitution of Louisiana declares that "the free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the invaluable rights of man; and every citizen may freely speak, write, and print, on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty." The Declaration of Rights of Mississippi declares that "no law shall ever be passed to curtail or restrain the liberty of speech, and of the press." The constitutions of all the slave States contain declarations and provisions like these. How fearfully have the descendants of those who framed them degenerated in their comprehension and practice of liberty, violating both the spirit and the letter of their original Bill of Rights! They are not yet fully aware of this. In the calmer times which are to come, they will perceive it, and look back with amazement upon the period of desperation, when not a voice was heard, even in the legislatures, to plead for human rights; when, for the sake of one doomed institution, they forgot what their fathers had done, fettered their own presses, tied their own hands, robbed their fellow-citizens of their right of free travelling, and did all they could to deprive those same fellow-citizens of liberty and life, for the avowal and promulgation of opinions.

Meantime, it would be but decent to forbear all boasts of a superior knowledge and love of freedom.

Here I gladly break off my dark chapter on the Morals of Slavery.

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SECTION II.
MORALS OF MANUFACTURES.

One remarkable effect of democratic institutions is the excellence of the work turned out by those who live under them. In a country where the whole course is open to every one; where, in theory, everything may be obtained by merit, men have the strongest stimulus to exert their powers, and try what they can achieve. I found master-workmen, who employ operatives of various nations, very sensible of this. Elsewhere, no artisan can possibly rise higher than to a certain point of dexterity, and amount of wages. In America, an artisan may attain to be governor of the State; member of Congress; even President. Instead of this possibility having the effect of turning his head, and making him unfit for business, (as some suppose, who seem to consider these opportunities as resembling the chances of a lottery,) it attaches him to his business and his master, to sober habits, and to intellectual cultivation.

The only apparent excess to which it leads is ill-considered enterprise. This is an evil sometimes to the individual, but not to society. A man who makes haste to be famous or rich by means of new inventions, may injure his own fortune or credit, but is usually a benefactor to society, by furnishing a new idea on which another may work with more success. Some of the most important improvements in the manufactures of the United States have been made by men who afterwards became insolvent. Where there is hasty enterprise, there is usually much conceit. The very haste seems to show that the man is thinking more of himself than of the subject on which he is employed. It naturally happens that the conceited originator breaks down in the middle of his scheme; and that some more patient, modest thinker takes it up where he leaves off, and completes the invention. I was shown, at the Paterson mills, an invention completed by two men on the spot, whose discovery has been extensively adopted in England. A workman fancied he had discovered a method by which he could twist rovings, fastened at both ends, quicker than had ever been done before. As a more thoughtful person would have foreseen, half the twisting came undone, as soon as the ends were unfastened. The projector threw his work aside; but a quiet observer among his brother workmen offered him a partnership and a new idea, in return for the primary suggestion. The quiet man saw how quickly the thread might be prepared, if the rovings could be condensed fast enough for the twisting. He added his discovery to what the first had really achieved; and the success was complete.

The factories are found to afford a safe and useful employment for much energy which would otherwise be wasted and misdirected. I found that in some places very bad morals had prevailed before the introduction of manufactures; while now the same society is eminently orderly. The great evil still is drunkenness: but of this there is less than there used to be; and other disorders have almost entirely disappeared. A steady employer has it in his power to do more for the morals of the society about him than the clergy themselves. The experiment has been tried, with entire success, of dismissing from the mills any who have been guilty of open vice. This is submitted to, because it is obviously reasonable that the sober workmen who remain should be protected from association with vicious persons who must be offensive or dangerous to them. If any employer has the firmness to dismiss unquestionable offenders, however valuable their services may be to him, he may confidently look for a cessation of such offences, and for a great purification of the society in which they have occurred.

The morals of the female factory population may be expected to be good when it is considered of what class it is composed. Many of the girls are in the factories because they have too much pride for domestic service. Girls who are too proud for domestic service as it is in America, can hardly be low enough for any gross immorality; or to need watching; or not to be trusted to avoid the contagion of evil example. To a stranger, their pride seems to take a mistaken direction, and they appear to deprive themselves of a respectable home and station, and many benefits, by their dislike of service: but this is altogether their own affair. They must choose for themselves their way of life. But the reasons of their choice indicate a state of mind superior to the grossest dangers of their position.

I saw a bill fixed up in the Waltham mill which bore a warning that no young lady who attended dancing-school that winter should be employed: and that the corporation had given directions to the overseer to dismiss any one who should be found to dance at the school. I asked the meaning of this; and the overseer's answer was, "Why, we had some trouble last winter about the dancing-school. It must, of course, be held in the evening, as the young folks are in the mill all day. They are very young, many of them; and they forget the time, and everything but the amusement, and dance away till two or three in the morning. Then they are unfit for their work the next day; or, if they get properly through their work, it is at the expense of their health. So we have forbidden the dancing-school; but, to make up for it, I have promised them that, as soon as the great new room at the hotel is finished, we will have a dance once a-fortnight. We shall meet and break up early; and my wife and I will dance; and we will all dance together."

I was sorry to see one bad and very unnecessary arrangement, in all the manufacturing establishments. In England, the best friends of the poor are accustomed to think it the crowning hardship of their condition that solitude is wholly forbidden to them. It is impossible that any human being should pass his life as well as he might do who is never alone,—who is not frequently alone. This is a weighty truth which can never be explained away. The silence, freedom and collectedness of solitude are absolutely essential to the health of the mind; and no substitute for this repose (or change of activity) is possible. In the dwellings of the English poor, parents and children are crowded into one room, for want of space and of furniture. All wise parents above the rank of poor, make it a primary consideration so to arrange their families as that each member may, at some hour, have some place where he may enter in, and shut his door, and feel himself alone. If possible, the sleeping places are so ordered. In America, where space is of far less consequence, where the houses are large, where the factory girls can build churches, and buy libraries, and educate brothers for learned professions, these same girls have no private apartments, and sometimes sleep six or eight in a room, and even three in a bed. This is very bad. It shows a want of inclination for solitude; an absence of that need of it which every healthy mind must feel, in a greater or less degree.

Now are the days when these gregarious habits should be broken through. New houses are being daily built: more parents are bringing their children to the factories. If the practice be now adopted, by the corporations, or by the parents who preside over separate establishments, of partitioning off the large sleeping apartments into small ones which shall hold each one occupant, the expense of partitions and windows and trouble will not be worth a moment's consideration in comparison with the improvement in intelligence, morals, and manners, which will be found to result from such an arrangement. If the change be not soon made, the American factory population, with all its advantages of education and of pecuniary sufficiency, will be found, as its numbers increase, to have been irreparably injured by its subjection to a grievance which is considered the very heaviest to which poverty exposes artisans in old countries. Man's own silent thoughts are his best safeguard and highest privilege. Of the full advantage of this safeguard, of the full enjoyment of this privilege, the innocent and industrious youth of a new country ought, by no mismanagement, to be deprived.

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SECTION III.
MORALS OF COMMERCE.

It is said in the United States that Commerce and the Navy are patronised by the federal party; as agriculture is, and the army would be, if there was one, by the democratic party. This is true enough. The greater necessity for co-operation, and therefore for the partial sacrifice of independence, imposed by commercial pursuits, is more agreeable to the aristocratic portion of society than to its opposite. Yet, while commerce has been spreading and improving, federalism has dwindled away; and most remarkably where commerce is carried on in its utmost activity: in Massachusetts. The democracy are probably finding out that more is gained by the concentration of the popular will than is lost in the way of individual independence, by men being brought together for objects which require concession and mutual subordination. However this may be, the spirit of commerce in the United States is, on the whole, honourable to the people.

I shall have to speak hereafter of the regard to wealth, as the most important object in life, which extensively corrupts Americans as it does all other society. Here, I have to speak only of the spirit in which one method of procuring wealth is prosecuted.

The activity of the commercial spirit in America is represented abroad, and too often at home, as indicative of nothing but sordid love of gain: a making haste to be rich, a directly selfish desire of aggrandisement. This view of the case seems to me narrow and injurious. I believe that many desires, various energies, some nobler and some meaner, find in commerce a centre for their activity. I have studied with some care the minds and manners of a variety of merchants, and other persons engaged in commerce, and have certainly found a regard to money a more superficial and intermitting influence than various others.

The spirit of enterprise is very remarkable in the American merchants. Beginning life, as all Americans do, with the world all open before them, and only a head and a pair of hands wherewith to gain it, a passionate desire to overcome difficulties arises in them. Being, (as I have before declared my opinion,) the most imaginative people in the world, the whole world rises fair before them, and they, not believing in impossibilities, long to conquer it.

Then, there is the meaner love of distinction; meaner than the love of enterprise, but higher than the desire of gain. The distinction sought is not always that which attends on superior wealth only; but on world-wide intercourses, on extensive affairs, on hospitality to a large variety of foreigners.

Again; there is the love of Art. Weak, immature, ignorant, perhaps, as this taste at present is, it exists: and indications of it which merit all respect, are to be found in many abodes. There are other, though not perhaps such lofty ways of pursuing art, than by embodying conceptions in pictures, statues, operas, and buildings. The love of Beauty and of the ways of Humanity may indicate and gratify itself by other and simpler methods than those which the high artists of the old world have sanctified. If any one can witness the meeting of one kind of American merchant with his supercargo, after a long, distant voyage, hear the questioning and answering, and witness the delight with which new curiosities are examined, and new theories of beauty and civilisation are put forth upon the impulse of the moment, and still doubt the existence of a love of art, still suppose the desire of gain the moving spring of that man's mind,—may Heaven preserve the community from being pronounced upon by such an observer! The critic with the stop-watch is magnanimous in comparison.

Again; there is the human eagerness after an object once adopted. In this case, it may be money, as in other cases it may be Queen Anne's farthings, the knockers of doors, ancient books, (for their editions and not their contents,) pet animals, autographs, or any other merely outward object whose charm lies in the pursuit. Several men of business, whose activity has made them very wealthy, have told me that, though they would not openly declare what would look like a boast, and would not be believed, the truth was that they should not care if they lost every dollar they had. They knew themselves well enough to perceive that the pleasure was in the pursuit, and not in the dollars: and I thought I knew some of them well enough to perceive that it would be rather a relief to have their money swept away, that they might again be as busy as ever in a mode which had become pleasant to them by habit and success. Of course, I am not speaking of such as of a very high and happy order; as to be for a moment compared with the few whose pursuits are of an unfailing but perpetually satisfying kind; with those whose recompense is incessant, but never fulfilled. I am only declaring that the eager pursuit of wealth does not necessarily indicate a love of wealth for its own sake.

What are the facts? What are the manifestations of the character of the American merchants? After their eager money-getting, how do they spend it? How much do they prize it?

Their benevolence is known throughout the world: not only that benevolence which founds and endows charities, and repairs to sufferers the mischief of accidents; but that which establishes schools of a higher order than common, and brings forward in life the most meritorious of those who are educated there; the benevolence which watches over the condition of seamen on the ocean, and their safety at home; the benevolence which busies itself, with much expense of dollars and trouble, to provide for the improved civilisation of the whole of society. If the most liberal institutions in the northern States were examined into, it would be found how active the merchant class has been, beyond all others, in their establishment.

Again: their eager money-getting is not for purposes of accumulation. Some—many, are deplorably ostentatious; but it seemed to me that the ostentation was an after-thought; though it might lead to renewed money-getting. Money was first gained. What was to be done with it? One might as well outshine one's neighbours, especially as this would be a fresh stimulus to get more still. This is bad; but it is not sordidness. Instances of accumulation are extremely rare. The miser is with them an antique, classical kind of personage, pictured forth as having on a high cap, a long gown, and sitting in a vaulted chamber, amidst money-chests. It would, I believe, be difficult there to find a pair of eyes that have looked upon a real living and breathing miser. My account of the doings of a miser whom I used wondering to watch in the days of my childhood never failed to excite amazement, very like incredulity, in those I was conversing with. The best proof that the money-getting of the eminently successful merchants of America is not for money's sake, lies in the fact, that in New England, peopled by more than 2,000,000 of inhabitants, there are not more than 500, probably not more than 400 individuals, who can be called affluent men; possessing, that is, 100,000 dollars and upwards. A prosperous community, in which a sordid pursuit of wealth was common, would be in a very different state from this.

The bankruptcies in the United States are remarkably frequent and disgraceful,—disgraceful in their nature, though not sufficiently so in the eyes of society. A clergyman in a commercial city declares that almost every head of a family in his congregation has been a bankrupt since his settlement. In Philadelphia, from six to eight hundred persons annually take the benefit of the insolvent laws; and numerous compromises take place which are not heard of further than the parties concerned in them. On seeing the fine house of a man who was a bankrupt four years before, and who was then worth 100,000 dollars, I asked whether such cases were common, and was grieved to find they were. Some insolvents pay their old debts when they rise again; but the greater number do not. This laxity of morals is favoured by the circumstances of the community, which require the industry of all its members, and can employ the resources of all,—first, of men of character, and then of speculators. But, few things are more disgraceful to American society than the carelessness with which speculators are allowed to game with other people's funds, and, after ruining those who put trust in them, to lift up their heads in all places, just as if they had, during their whole lives, rendered unto all their dues. Whatever may be the causes or the palliations of speculation; whatever may be pleaded about currency mistakes, and the temptations to young men to make fortunes by the public lands, one thing is clear; that no man, who, having failed, and afterwards having the means to pay his debts in full, does not pay them, can be regarded as an honest man, and ought to be received upon the same footing with honest men, whatever may be his accomplishments, or his subsequent fortune. What would be thought of any society which should cherish an escaped (not reformed) thief, because a large legacy had enabled him to set up his carriage? Yet how much difference is there in the two cases? It is very rarely a duty,—more rarely than is generally supposed, to mark and shun the guilty. It is usually more right to seek and help him. But, in the case of a spreading vice, which is viewed with increasing levity, the reprobation of the honest portion of society ought to be very distinct and emphatic. Those who would not associate with escaped thieves should avoid prosperous bankrupts who are not thinking of paying their debts.

The gravest sin chargeable upon the merchants of the United States is their conduct on the abolition question. This charge is by no means general. There are instances of a manly declaration of opinion on the side of freedom, and also of a spirit of self-sacrifice in the cause, which can hardly be surpassed for nobleness. There are merchants who have thrown up their commerce with the south when there was reason to believe that its gains were wrung from the slave; and there are many who have freely poured out their money, and risked their reputation, in defence of the abolition cause, and of liberty of speech and the press. But the reproach of the persecution of the abolitionists, and of tampering with the fundamental liberties of the people, rests mainly with the merchants of the northern States.

It is worthy of remembrance that the Abolition movement originated from the sordid act of a merchant. While Garrison was at Baltimore, studying the Colonisation scheme, a ship belonging to a merchant of Newburyport, Massachusetts, arrived at Baltimore to take freight for New Orleans. There was some difficulty about the expected cargo. The captain was offered a freight of slaves, wrote to the merchant for leave, and received orders to carry these slaves to New Orleans. Garrison poured out, in a libel, (so called,) his indignation against this deed, committed by a man who, as a citizen of Massachusetts, thanks God every Thanksgiving Day that the soil of his State is untrod by the foot of a slave. Garrison was fined and imprisoned; and after his release, was warmly received in New York, where he lectured upon Abolition; from which time, the cause has gained strength so as to have now become unconquerable.

The spirit of this Newburyport merchant has dwelt in too many of the same vocation. The Faneuil Hall meeting was convened chiefly by merchants; and they have been conspicuous in all the mobs. They have kept the clergy dumb: they have overawed the colleges, given their cue to the newspapers, and shown a spirit of contempt and violence, equalling even that of the slave-holders, towards those who, in acting upon their honest convictions, have appeared likely to affect their sources of profit. At Cincinnati, they were chiefly merchants who met to destroy the right of discussion; and passed a resolution directly recommendatory of violence for this purpose. They were merchants who waited in deputation on the editor of the anti-slavery newspaper there, to intimidate him from the use of his constitutional liberty, and who made themselves by these acts answerable for the violences which followed. This was so clear, that they were actually taunted by their slave-holding neighbours, on the other side of the river, with their sordidness in attempting to extinguish the liberties of the republic for the sake of their own pecuniary gains.

The day will come when their eyes will be cleansed from the gold-dust which blinds them. Meanwhile, as long as they continue active against the most precious rights of the community; as long as they may be fairly considered more guilty on this tremendous question of Human Wrongs than even the slave-holders of the south,—more guilty than any class whatever, except the clergy,—let them not boast of their liberality and their benevolence. Generosity loses half its grace when it does not co-exist with justice. Those can ill be esteemed benefactors to the community in one direction, who are unfaithful to their citizenship in another. Till such can be roused from their delusion, and can see their conduct as others see it, the esteem of the world must rest on those of their class who, to the graces of enterprise, liberality, and taste, add the higher merit of intrepid, self-sacrificing fidelity to the cause of Human Rights.