| Northern colonies not well adapted to negro labor. The Southern colonies well adapted to negro labor. |
The negroes were not, however, fitted for labor in the Northern colonies. In the first place, it was too cold for them to thrive there. A warm, moist air is the natural climate for the negro. In the second place, the work to be done in these sections was not suited to his capacity. The Northern colonies had not, indeed, at that early day, developed the finer forms of industry which have subsequently distinguished that part of the country. They were then, as to their internal pursuits, almost as completely agricultural as the colonies of the South. But their farming required a great deal more of intelligence, thrift, and industry in the laborer than the negro of that day possessed. The country was broken, the good soil was limited in amount, the weather was capricious, and the management of the crops demanded judgment and discretion. On the other hand, the vast level areas of good soil, the warm, uniform climate, and the simple crops of the Southern colonies furnished the conditions favorable to the employment of negro labor.
| Negro slavery a temporary necessity in the South. |
It is not easy to see how the rich swamp-lands of these colonies could ever have been reclaimed and made tributary to the civilization of the world in any way but by the employment of negro labor. And it is no easier to see how the pure negro could then have been brought to do this great work save through slavery to the white race, save by being forced to contribute the muscular effort, under the direction of the superior intelligence of the white race, to the realization of objects determined by that superior intelligence. The negro is proof against malaria, and thrives under the burning sun. The white man is destroyed by the former and greatly disabled by the latter. And the pure negro would not at that period of his development labor voluntarily. These were the elements of the problem which confronted those who undertook to subject the vast marshes of the Southern colonies to cultivation and to prepare them for the production of their most valuable contributions to the comforts of civilized man. The solution of the problem was negro slavery.
| Was negro slavery an error and an evil from the first? |
We are most of us inclined, at this day, to hold that this was an erroneous solution, and that we could have discovered a better one; but it was the solution which was reached, and we shall be wiser if we seek to understand it clearly, instead of wasting our energies in its condemnation, remembering that many of the things of the past, which, from the point of view of the present, we are prone to regard as error, and even as sin, are only anachronisms. In fact, those who founded the colony of Georgia thought then that they had a better solution of the problem. They prohibited slavery at the outset from that colony. In fourteen years they came to regard this act as a great mistake, and the noblest spirits among them acknowledged themselves in error, and joined in the movement for the introduction of negro slave-labor.
| Slavery legislation in the Southern colonies. |