"Now, my good northern friend, not so fast, if you please; I can see the evil of all this, and so can you, if you will but study the negro's character a little deeper. The menial man who has passed through generations of oppression, and whose life and soul are blotted from the right of manhood, is sensitive of the power that crushes him. He has been robbed of the means of elevating himself by those who now accuse him of the crime of degradation: and, wherever the chance is afforded him of elevation, as that increases so does a tenacious knowledge of his rights; yet, he feels the prejudice that cuts and slights him in his progress, that charges him with the impudence of a negro, that calls his attempts to be a man mere pompous foolery."
"And it is so! To see a nigger setting himself up among white folks-it's perfectly ridiculous!"
"Mark me, Mr. Scranton: there's where you northerners mistake yourselves. The negro seldom desires to mix with whites, and I hold it better they should keep together; but that two races cannot live together without the one enslaving the other is a fallacy popular only with those who will not see the future, and obstinately refuse to review the past. You must lessen your delicate sensibilities; and when you make them less painful to the man of colour at the north, believe me, the south will respond to the feeling. Experience has changed my feelings,—experience has been my teacher. I have based my new system upon experience; and its working justifies me in all I have said. Let us set about extracting the poison from our institutions, instead of losing ourselves in contemplating an abstract theory for its government."
"Remember, deacon, men are not all born to see alike. There are rights and privileges belonging to the southerner: he holds the trade in men right, and he would see the Union sundered to atoms before he would permit the intervention of the federal government on that subject," Mr. Scranton seriously remarks, placing his two thumbs in the armpits of his vest, and assuming an air of confidence, as if to say, "I shall outsouthern the southerner yet, I shall."
"That's just the point upon which all the villainy of our institution rests: the simple word man!-man a progressive being; man a chattel,—a thing upon which the sordid appetite of every wretch may feed. Why cannot Africa give up men? She has been the victim of Christendom-her flesh and blood have served its traffic, have enriched its coffers, and even built its churches; but like a ferocious wolf that preys upon the fold in spite of watchers, she yet steals Afric's bleeding victims, and frowns upon them because they are not white, nor live as white men live."
"Mercy on me!" says Mr. Scranton, with a sigh, "you can't ameliorate the system as it stands: that's out of the question. Begin to loosen the props, and the whole fabric will tumble down. And then, niggers won't be encouraged to work at a price for their labour; and how are you going to get along in this climate, and with such an enormous population of vagabonds?"
"Remember, Mr. Scranton," ejaculated the deacon, "there's where you mistake the man in the negro; and through these arguments, set forth in your journal, we suffer. You must have contracted them by association with bad slave-owners. Mark ye! the negro has been sunk to the depths where we yet curse him; and is it right that we should keep him cursed?-to say nothing of the semi-barbarous position in which it finds our poor whites. He feels that his curse is for life-time; his hopes vibrate with its knowledge, and through it he falls from that holy inspiration that could make him a man, enjoying manhood's rights. Would not our energy yield itself a sacrifice to the same sacrificer? Had we been loaded with chains of tyranny, what would have been our condition? Would not that passion which has led the Saxon on to conquest, and spread his energy through the western world, have yielded when he saw the last shadow of hope die out, and realised that his degradation was for life-time? Would not the yearnings of such a consummation have recoiled to blast every action of the being who found himself a chattel? And yet this very chattel, thus yoked in death, toils on in doubts and fears, in humbleness and submission, with unrequited fortitude and affection. And still all is doubted that he does, even crushed in the prejudice against his colour!"
"Well, deacon, you perfectly startle me, to hear a southerner talk that way at the south. If you keep on, you'll soon have an abolition society without sending north for it."
"That's just what I want. I want our southerners to look upon the matter properly, and to take such steps as will set us right in the eyes of the world. Humanity is progressing with rapid strides-slavery cannot exist before it! It must fall; and we should prepare to meet it, and not be so ungrateful, at least, that we cannot reflect upon its worth, and give merit to whom merit is due." Thus were presented the north and south; the former loses her interests in humanity by seeking to serve the political ends of the latter.