We feel confident that, if statistics could be had to throw light upon this subject, we should find that there is less separation of families among the negroes than occurs with almost any other class of persons.
As the author of the article, however, is evidently a man of honor, and expresses many most noble and praiseworthy sentiments, it cannot be supposed that these statements were put forth with any view to misrepresent or to deceive. They are only to be regarded as evidences of the facility with which a sanguine mind often overlooks the most glaring facts that make against a favorite idea or theory, or which are unfavorable in their bearings on one’s own country or family. Thus the citizens of some place notoriously unhealthy will come to believe, and assert, with the utmost sincerity, that there is actually less sickness in their town than any other of its size in the known world. Thus parents often think their children perfectly immaculate in just those particulars in which others see them to be most faulty. This solution of the phenomena is a natural and amiable one, and enables us to retain our respect for our Southern brethren.
There is another circumstance, also, to be taken into account, in reading such assertions as these. It is evident, from the pamphlet in question, that the writer is one of the few who regard the possession of absolute irresponsible power as the highest of motives to moderation and temperance in its use. Such men are commonly associated in friendship and family connection with others of similar views, and are very apt to fall into the error of judging others by themselves, and thinking that a thing may do for all the world because it operates well in their immediate circle. Also it cannot but be a fact that the various circumstances which from infancy conspire to degrade and depress the negro in the eyes of a Southern-born man,—the constant habit of speaking of them, and hearing them spoken of, and seeing them advertised, as mere articles of property, often in connection with horses, mules, fodder, swine, &c., as they are almost daily in every Southern paper,—must tend, even in the best-constituted minds, to produce a certain obtuseness with regard to the interests, sufferings and affections, of such as do not particularly belong to himself, which will peculiarly unfit him for estimating their condition. The author has often been singularly struck with this fact, in the letters of Southern friends; in which, upon one page, they will make some assertion regarding the condition of Southern negroes, and then go on, and in other connections state facts which apparently contradict them all. We can all be aware how this familiarity would operate with ourselves. Were we called upon to state how often our neighbors’ cows were separated from their calves, or how often their household furniture and other effects are scattered and dispersed by executor’s sales, we should be inclined to say that it was not a misfortune of very common occurrence.
But let us open two South Carolina papers, published in the very state where this gentleman is residing, and read the advertisements FOR ONE WEEK. The author has slightly abridged them.
COMMISSIONER’S SALE OF 12 LIKELY NEGROES.
Fairfield District.
| R. W. Murray and wife and | } | |
| others | } | |
| v. | } | In Equity. |
| William Wright and wife | } | |
| and others. | } |
In pursuance of an Order of the Court of Equity made in the above case at July Term, 1852, I will sell at public outcry, to the highest bidder, before the Court House in Winnsboro, on the first Monday in January next,
12 VERY LIKELY NEGROES,
belonging to the estate of Micajah Mobley, deceased, late of Fairfield District.