The negro woman is unprotected either by law or public opinion. She is the property of her master, and her daughters are his property. They are allowed to have no conscientious scruples, no sense of shame, no regard for the feelings of husband, or parent; they must be entirely subservient to the will of their owner, on pain of being whipped as near unto death as will comport with his interest, or quite to death, if it suit his pleasure.
Those who know human nature would be able to conjecture the unavoidable result, even if it were not betrayed by the amount of mixed population. Think for a moment, what a degrading effect must be produced on the morals of both blacks and whites by customs like these!
Considering we live in the nineteenth century, it is indeed a strange state of society where the father sells his child, and the brother puts his sister up at auction! Yet these things are often practised in our republic.
Doctor Walsh, in his account of Brazil, tells an anecdote of one of these fathers, who love their offspring at market price. "For many years," says he, "this man kept his son in slavery, and maintained the right to dispose of him, as he would of his mule. Being ill, however, and near to die, he made his will, left his child his freedom, and apprised him of it. Some time after he recovered, and having a dispute with the young man, he threatened to sell him with the rest of his stock. The son, determined to prevent this, assassinated his father in a wood, got possession of the will, demanded his freedom, and obtained it. This circumstance was perfectly well known in the neighborhood, but no process
was instituted against him. He was not chargeable, as I could hear, with any other delinquency than the horrible one of murdering his father to obtain his freedom." This forms a fine picture of the effects of slavery upon human relations![F]
[F] A short time ago a reverend and very benevolent gentleman suggested as the subject of a book, The Beauty of Human Relations.—What a bitter jest it would be, to send him this volume, with the information that I had complied with his request!
I have more than once heard people, who had just returned from the South, speak of seeing a number of mulattoes in attendance where they visited, whose resemblance to the head of the family was too striking not to be immediately observed. What sort of feeling must be excited in the minds of those slaves by being constantly exposed to the tyranny or caprice of their own brothers and sisters, and by the knowledge that these near relations, will on a division of the estate, have power to sell them off with the cattle?
But the vices of white men eventually provide a scourge for themselves. They increase the negro race, but the negro can never increase theirs; and this is one great reason why the proportion of colored population is always so large in slaveholding countries. As the ratio increases more and more every year, the colored people must eventually be the stronger party; and when this result happens, slavery must either be abolished, or government must furnish troops, of whose wages the free states must pay their proportion.
As a proof of the effects of slavery on the temper, I will relate but very few anecdotes.
The first happened in the Bahamas. It is extracted from a despatch of Mr. Huskisson to the governor of those islands: "Henry and Helen Moss have been found guilty of a misdemeanor, for their cruelty to their slave Kate; and those facts of the case, which seem beyond dispute, appear to be as follows: