As for the women of the northern States, most have the blessing of work, though not of the extent and variety which will hereafter be seen to be necessary for the happiness of their lives. All married women, except the ladies of rich merchants and others, are liable to have their hands full of household occupation, from the uncertainty of domestic service; a topic to be referred to hereafter. Women who do not marry have, in many instances, to work for their support; and, as will be shown in another connexion, under peculiar disadvantages. Work, on the whole, may be considered the rule, and vacuity the exception.[13]
What is life in the slave States, in respect of work?
There are two classes, the servile and the imperious, between whom there is a great gulf fixed. The servile class has not even the benefit of hearty toil. No solemn truths sink down into them, to cheer their hearts, stimulate their minds, and nerve their hands. Their wretched lives are passed between an utter debasement of the will, and a conflict of the will with external force.
The other class is in circumstances as unfavourable as the least happy order of persons in the old world. The means of educating children are so meagre[14] that young people begin life under great disadvantages. The vicious fundamental principle of morals in a slave country, that labour is disgraceful, taints the infant mind with a stain which is as fatal in the world of spirits as the negro tinge is at present in the world of society. It made my heart ache to hear the little children unconsciously uttering thoughts with which no true religion, no true philosophy can coexist. "Do you think I shall work?" "O, you must not touch the poker here." "You must not do this or that for yourself: the negroes will be offended, and it won't do for a lady to do so." "Poor thing! she has to teach: if she had come here, she might have married a rich man, perhaps." "Mamma has so much a-year now, so we have not to do our work at home, or any trouble. 'Tis such a comfort!"—When children at school call everything that pleases them "gentlemanly," and pity all (but slaves) who have to work, and talk of marrying early for an establishment, it is all over with them. A more hopeless state of degradation can hardly be conceived of, however they may ride, and play the harp, and sing Italian, and teach their slaves what they call religion.
"Poor things!" may be said of such, in return. They know little, with their horror of work, of what awaits them. Theirs is destined to be, if their wish of an establishment is fulfilled, a life of toil, irksome and unhonoured. They escape the name; but they are doomed to undergo the worst of the reality. Their husbands are not to be envied, though they do ride on white horses, (the slave's highest conception of bliss,) lie down to repose in hot weather, and spend their hours between the discharge of hospitality and the superintendence of their estates; and the highly honourable and laborious charge of public affairs. But the wives of slave-holders are, as they and their husbands declare, as much slaves as their negroes. If they will not have everything go to rack and ruin around them, they must superintend every household operation, from the cellar to the garrets: for there is nothing that slaves can do well. While the slaves are perpetually at one's heels, lolling against the bed-posts before one rises in the morning, standing behind the chairs, leaning on the sofa, officiously undertaking, and invariably spoiling everything that one had rather do for one's-self, the smallest possible amount of real service is performed. The lady of the house carries her huge bunch of keys, (for every consumable thing must be locked up,) and has to give out, on incessant requests, whatever is wanted for the household. She is for ever superintending, and trying to keep things straight, without the slightest hope of attaining anything like leisure and comfort. What is there in retinue, in the reputation of ease and luxury, which can compensate for toils and cares of this nature? How much happier must be the lot of a village milliner, or of the artisan's wife who sweeps her own floors, and cooks her husband's dinner, than that of the planter's lady with twenty slaves to wait upon her; her sons migrating because work is out of the question, and they have not the means to buy estates; and her daughters with no better prospect than marrying, as she has done, to toil as she does!
Some few of these ladies are among the strongest-minded and most remarkable women I have ever known. There are great draw-backs, (as will be seen hereafter,) but their mental vigour is occasionally proportioned to their responsibility. Women who have to rule over a barbarous society, (small though it be,) to make and enforce laws, provide for all the physical wants, and regulate the entire habits of a number of persons who can in no respect take care of themselves, must be strong and strongly disciplined, if they in any degree discharge this duty. Those who shrink from it become perhaps the weakest women I have anywhere seen: selfishly timid, humblingly dependent, languid in body, and with minds of no reach at all. These two extremes are found in the slave States, in the most striking opposition. It is worthy of note, that I never found there a woman strong enough voluntarily to brave the woes of life in the presence of slavery; nor any woman weak enough to extenuate the vices of the system; each knowing, prior to experience, what those woes and vices are.
There are a few unhappy persons in the slave States, too few, I believe, to be called a class, who strongly exemplify the consequences of such a principle of morals as that work is a disgrace. There are a few, called by the slaves "mean whites;" signifying whites who work with the hands. Where there is a coloured servile class, whose colour has become a disgrace through their servitude, two results are inevitable: that those who have the colour without the servitude are disgraced among the whites; and those who have the servitude without the colour are as deeply disgraced among the coloured. More intensely than white work-people are looked down upon at Port-au-Prince, are the "mean whites" despised by the slaves of the Carolinas. They make the most, of course, of the only opportunity they can ever have of doing what they see their superiors do,—despising their fellow-creatures. No inducement would be sufficient to bring honest, independent men into the constant presence of double-distilled hatred and contempt like this; and the general character of the "mean whites" may therefore be anticipated. They are usually men who have no prospect, no chance elsewhere; the lowest of the low.
When I say that no inducement would be sufficient, I mean no politic inducement. There are inducements of the same force as those which drew martyrs of old into the presence of savage beasts in the amphitheatre, which guided Howard through the gloom of prisons, and strengthened Guyon of Marseilles to offer himself a certain victim to the plague,—there are inducements of such force as this which carry down families to dwell in the midst of contempt and danger, where everything is lost but,—the one object which carries them there. "Mean whites" these friends of the oppressed fugitive may be in the eyes of all around them; but how they stand in the eye of One whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, may some day be revealed. To themselves it is enough that their object is gained. They do not want praise; they are above it: and they have shown that they can do without sympathy. It is enough to commend them to their own peace of heart.