“Is it the whites, or the blacks, who abuse the government’s bounty?”
“The whites.”
“It appears, then, that they have the same faults you ascribe to the blacks: they are not over-honest, and they will not work unless obliged to.”
“Yes, there are shiftless whites to be sure. There’s a place eight miles west from here, known as Texas, inhabited by a class of poor whites steeped in vice, ignorance, and crime of every description. They have no comforts, and no energy to work and obtain them. They have no books, no morality, no religion; they go clothed like savages, half sheltered, and half fed,—except that government is now supporting them.”
“Do the whites we are feeding come mostly from that region?”
“O, no; they come from all over the county. Some walk as far as twenty miles to draw their fortnight’s or three weeks’ rations. Some were in good circumstances before the war; and some are tolerably well off now. A general impression prevails that this support comes from a tax on the county; so every man, whether he needs it or not, rushes in for a share. It is impossible to convince the country people that it is the United States government that is feeding them. Why, sir, there are men in the back districts who will not yet believe that the war is over, and slavery at an end!”
“It appears,” said I, “that ignorance is not confined to the region you call Texas; and that, considering all things, the whites are even more degraded than the blacks. Why doesn’t some prophet of evil arise and predict that the white race, too, will die out because it is vicious and will not work?”
“The whites are a different race, sir,—a different race,” was the emphatic, but not very satisfactory reply. “The negro cannot live without the care and protection of a master.”
“You think, then, the abolition of slavery a great misfortune?”
“A great misfortune to the negroes, certainly; but not to the whites: we shall be better off without them.”