This hatred is a sign of the times; and so are the alleged causes of it; both are from their nature so manifestly temporary. The principal cause alleged is the impossibility of giving people of colour any idea of duty, from their want of natural affection. I was told in the same breath of their attachment to their masters, and devotion to them in sickness; and of their utter want of all affection to their parents and children, husbands and wives. For "people of colour," read "slaves," and the account is often correct. It is true that slaves will often leave their infants to perish, rather than take any trouble about them; that they will utterly neglect a sick parent or husband; while they will nurse a white mistress with much ostentation. The reason is obvious. Such beings are degraded so far below humanity that they will take trouble, for the sake of praise or more solid reward, after they have become dead to all but grossly selfish inducements. Circumstances will fully account for a great number of cases of this sort: but to set against these, there are perhaps yet more instances of domestic devotion, not to be surpassed in the annals of humanity. Of these I know more than I can here set down; partly from their number, and partly from the fear of exposing to injury the individuals alluded to.
A friend of mine was well acquainted at Washington with a woman who had been a slave; and who, after gaining her liberty, worked incessantly for many years, denying herself all but absolute necessaries, in order to redeem her husband and children. She was a sick-nurse, when my friend knew her; and, by her merits, obtained good pay. She had first bought herself; having earned, by extra toil, three or four hundred dollars. She then earned the same sum, and redeemed her husband; and had bought three, out of her five, children when my friend last saw her. She made no boast of her industry and self-denial. Her story was extracted from her by questions; and she obviously felt that she was doing what was merely unavoidable. It is impossible to help instituting a comparison between this woman and the gentlemen who, by their own licentiousness, increase the number of slave children whom they sell in the market. My friend formerly carried an annual present from a distant part of the country to this poor woman: but it is not known what has become of her, and whether she died before she had completed her object, of freeing all her family.
There is a woman now living with a lady in Boston, requiring high wages, which her superior services, as well as her story, enable her to command. This woman was a slave, and was married to a slave, by whom she had two children. The husband and wife were much attached. One day, her husband was suddenly sold away to a distance; and her master, whose object was to increase his stock as fast as possible, immediately required her to take another husband. She stoutly refused. Her master thought her so far worthy of being humoured, that he gave her his son,—forced him upon her, as her present feelings show. She had two more children, of much lighter complexion than the former. When the son left the estate, her master tried again to force a negro husband upon her. In desperation, she fled, carrying one of her first children with her. She is now working to redeem the other, a girl; and she has not given up all hope of recovering her husband. She was asked whether she thought of doing anything for her two mulatto children. She replied that, to be sure, they were her children; but that she did not think she ever could tell her husband that she had had those two children. If this be not chastity, what is? Where are all the fairest natural affections, if not in these women?
At a very disorderly hotel in South Carolina, we were waited upon by a beautiful mulatto woman and her child, a pretty girl of about eight. The woman entreated that we would buy her child. On her being questioned, it appeared that it was "a bad place" in which she was: that she had got her two older children sold away, to a better place; and now, her only wish was for this child to be saved. On being asked whether she really desired to be parted from her only remaining child, so as never to see her again, she replied that "it would be hard to part," but for the child's sake she did wish that we would buy her.
A kind-hearted gentleman in the south, finding that the laws of his State precluded his teaching his legacy of slaves according to the usual methods of education, bethought himself, at length, of the moral training of task-work. It succeeded admirably. His negroes soon began to work as slaves are never, under any other arrangement, seen to work. Their day's task was finished by eleven o'clock. Next, they began to care for one another: the strong began to help the weak:—first, husbands helped their wives; then parents helped their children; and, at length, the young began to help the old. Here was seen the awakening of natural affections which had lain in a dark sleep.
Of the few methods of education which have been tried, none have succeeded so well as this task-work. As its general adoption might have the effect of enabling slavery to subsist longer than it otherwise could, perhaps it is well that it can be employed only to a very small extent. Much of the work on the plantations cannot be divided into tasks. Where it can, it is wise in the masters to avail themselves of this means of enlisting the will of the slave in behalf of his work.
No other mode of teaching serves this purpose in any degree. The shutting up of the schools, when I was in the south, struck me as a sign of the times,—a favourable sign, in as far as it showed the crisis to be near; and it gave me little regret on account of the slave children. Reading and writing even (which are never allowed) would be of no use to beings without minds,—as slaves are prior to experience of life; and religious teaching is worse than useless to beings who, having no rights, can have no duties. Their whole notion of religion is of power and show, as regards God; of subjection to a new sort of reward and punishment, as regards themselves; and invisible reward and punishment have no effect on them. A negro, conducting worship, was heard to pray thus; and broad as the expressions are, they are better than an abject, unintelligent adoption of the devotional language of whites. "Come down, O Lord, come down,—on your great white horse, a kickin' and snortin'." An ordinary negro's highest idea of majesty is of riding a prancing white horse. As for their own concern in religion, I know of a "force" where a preacher had just made a strong impression. The slaves had given up dancing, and sang nothing but psalms: they exhibited the most ludicrous spiritual pride, and discharged their business more lazily than ever, taunting their mistress with, "You no holy. We be holy. You no in state o' salvation." Such was the effect upon the majority. Here is the effect upon a stronger head.
"Harry," said his master, "you do as badly as ever. You steal and tell lies. Don't you know you will be punished in hell?"
"Ah, massa, I been thinking 'bout that. I been thinking when Harry's head is in the ground, there'll be no more Harry,—no more Harry."
"But the clergyman, and other people who know better than you, tell you that if you steal you will go to hell, and be punished there."