"You know that, if they come here, I shall have to depend upon you all to protect my family."
The slave was silent.
"If I give you arms, you will protect me and my family, will you not?"
"No, massa."
"Do you mean, that if the Southampton negroes come this way, you will join them?"
"Yes, massa."
When he went out of the room, his master wept without restraint. He owned that all his hope, all his confidence was gone. Yet, who ever deserved confidence more than the man who spoke that last "No" and "Yes?" The more confidence in the man, the less in the system. This is the philosophy of the story.
I have mentioned the fact that no insurrections have for a long time taken place. In some parts of the slave regions, the effect has been to relax the laws relating to slaves; and such relaxation was always pointed out to me as an indication that slavery would go out of itself, if it were let alone. In other parts, new and very severe laws were being passed against the slaves; and this was pointed out to me as a sign that the condition of the negro was aggravated by the interference of his friends; and that his best chance lay in slavery being let alone. Thus the opposite facts were made to yield the same conclusion. A friend of mine, a slave-holder, observed to me, that both the relaxation and the aggravation of restrictions upon slaves were an indication of the tendency of public opinion: the first being done in sympathy with it, the other in fear of it.
There was an outcry, very vehement, and very general among the friends of slavery, in both north and south, against the cruelty of abolitionists in becoming the occasion of the laws against slaves being made more severe. In my opinion, this affords no argument against abolition, even if the condition of the slaves of to-day were aggravated by the stir of opinion. The negroes of the next generation are not to be doomed to slavery for fear of somewhat more being inflicted on their parents: and, severe as the laws already are, the consequence of straining them tighter still would be that they would burst. But the fact is, that so far from the condition of the slave being made worse by the efforts of his distant friends, it has been substantially improved. I could speak confidently of this as a necessary consequence of the value set upon opinion by the masters; but I know it also from what I myself saw; and from the lips of many slave-holders. The slaves of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana, have less liberty of communication with each other; they are deprived of the few means of instruction that they had; they are shut in earlier in the evening, and precluded from supping and dancing for half the night, as they used to do; but they are substantially better treated; they are less worked by hard masters; less flogged; better fed and clothed. The eyes of the world are now upon the American slave and his master: the kind master goes on as he did before: the hard master dares not be so unkind as formerly. He hates his slave more than ever, for slavery is more troublesome than ever; but he is kept in order, by the opinion of the world abroad and the neighbours around; and he dares not vent his hatred on his human property, as he once could. A slave-holder declared in Congress, that the slaves of the south knew that Dr. Channing had written a book on their behalf. No doubt. The tidings of the far-off movement in their favour come to them on every wind that blows, calming their desperation, breathing hope into their souls; making the best of their masters thoughtful and sad, and the worst, desperate and cruel, though kept within bounds by fear.
The word 'hatred' is not too strong for the feeling of a large proportion of slave-holders towards particular slaves; or, as they would call them, (the word 'slave' never being heard in the south,) their 'force,' their 'hands,' their 'negroes,' their 'people.' I was frequently told of the 'endearing relation' subsisting between master and slaves; but, at the best, it appeared to me the same 'endearing relation' which subsists between a man and his horse, between a lady and her dog. As long as the slave remains ignorant, docile, and contented, he is taken good care of, humoured, and spoken of with a contemptuous, compassionate kindness. But, from the moment he exhibits the attributes of a rational being,—from the moment his intellect seems likely to come into the most distant competition with that of whites, the most, deadly hatred springs up;—not in the black, but in his oppressors. It is a very old truth that we hate those whom we have injured. Never was it more clear than in this case. I had, from time to time in my life, witnessed something of human malice; I had seen some of the worst aspects of domestic service in England; of village scandal; of political rivalship; and other circumstances provocative of the worst passions; but pure, unmitigated hatred, the expression of which in eye and voice makes one's blood run cold, I never witnessed till I became acquainted with the blacks of America, their friends and oppressors: the blacks and their friends the objects; their oppressors the far more unhappy subjects. It so happens that the most remarkable instances of this that I met with were clergymen and ladies. The cold livid hatred which deformed, like a mask, the faces of a few, while deliberately slandering, now the coloured race, and now the abolitionists, could never be forgotten by me, as a fearful revelation, if the whole country were to be absolutely christianized to-morrow. Mr. Madison told me, that if he could work a miracle, he knew what it should be. He would make all the blacks white; and then he could do away with slavery in twenty-four hours. So true it is that all the torturing associations of injury have become so connected with colour, that an institution which hurts everybody and benefits none, which all rational people who understand it dislike, despise, and suffer under, can with difficulty be abolished, because of the hatred which is borne to an irremovable badge.