I should have been sorry to miss this spectacle. The slaves enjoy the amusement and profit yielded by this market. They sit in rows, by lamplight, some with heaps of fruit and vegetables before them, or surrounded by articles of their own manufacture: boxes, bedsteads, baskets, and other handiworks, very cheap, and of good workmanship. The bananas, pines, imported apples, and oranges, which are seen in great abundance, are usually the property of the master; while the manufactured articles, made at spare hours, are nominally the slave's own. Some are allowed to make use of their leisure in preparing for the market, on condition of bringing their masters six dollars each per week, retaining whatever surplus they may gain. I could not learn the consequence of failing to bring in the six dollars per week. They enjoy the fun and bustle of the market, and look with complacency on any white customers who will attend it. Their activity and merriment at market were pointed out to me as an assurance of their satisfaction with their condition, their conviction that their present position is the one they were made for, and in which their true happiness is to be found.
At the very same moment I was shown the ruins of the church of St. Philip, destroyed by fire, as they frowned in the rear of the lamplight; and I was informed that the church had once before been on fire, but had been saved by the exertions of a slave, who "had his liberty given him for a reward."
"A reward!" said I. "What! when the slaves are convinced that their true happiness lies in slavery?"
The conversation had come to an awkward pass. A lady advanced to the rescue, saying that some few, too many, were haunted by a pernicious fancy, put into their heads by others, about liberty; a mere fancy, which, however, made them like the idea of freedom.
"So the benefactor of the city was rewarded by being indulged, to his own hurt, in a pernicious fancy?"
"Why ... yes."
My impressions of Charleston may easily be gathered from what I have said. It seems to me a place of great activity, without much intellectual result; of great gayety, without much ease and pleasure. I am confident that, whatever might be the reason, the general mind was full of mystery and anxiety at the time of my visit; and that some hearts were glowing with ambitious hopes, and others sinking in fears, more or less clearly defined, of the political crisis which seems to be now at hand. These are the influences which are educating the youth of Charleston, more powerfully than all schools and colleges, and all books; inducing a reliance on physical rather than moral force, and strengthening attachment to feudal notions of honour and of every kind of good; notions which have no affinity with true republican morals. The prospects of the citizens are "dark every way," as some declared; for the rising generation must either ascend, through a severe discipline and prodigious sacrifices, to a conformity with republican principles, or descend into a condition of solitary feudalism, neither sanctioned by the example nor cheered by the sympathy of the world; but, on the contrary, regarded with that compassion which is precisely the last species of regard which the feudal spirit is able to endure.
We left Charleston in company with Mr. Calhoun and his family. The great nullifier told me many and long stories of his early days. Not being aware of my strong impressions respecting his present views and purposes, he could have no idea of the intense interest with which I listened to his accounts of the first kindling of his burning mind. He was five years old, standing between his father's knees, when his first political emotions stirred within him, awakened by his parent's talk of the colony and of free times just after the Revolution. If some good angel had at that moment whispered the parent, inspiring him to direct that young ambition to the ultimate grandeur of meek service, to animate that high spirit to a moral conflict with all human wrongs, we might already have owed to a mind so energetic the redemption of the negro race from the affliction, and of the republic from the disgrace of slavery, instead of mourning over the dedication of such powers to the propagation and exasperation of the curse. I feared how it would be; what part he would take in the present struggle between the two principles of greatness, physical force with territorial conquest, and moral power shown in self-conquest. I feared that Mr. Calhoun would organize and head the feudal party, as he has done; but I never had any fears that that party would prevail. When we parted at Branchville he little knew—he might have been offended if he had known—with what affectionate solicitude those whom he left behind looked on into his perilous political path. I am glad we could not foresee how soon our fears would be justified. Mr. Calhoun is at present insisting that the pirate colony of Texas shall be admitted into the honourable American Union; that a new impulse shall thereby be given to the slavetrade, and a new extension to slavery; and that his country shall thereby surrender her moral supremacy among the nations for a gross and antiquated feudal ambition. He vows, taking the whole Union to witness, that these things shall be. The words have publicly passed his pen and his lips, "Texas shall be annexed to the United States." His best friends must hope that the whole world will say, "It shall not."