But the thought of Genieve sort o’ boyed me up, and duty, and I didn’t care for his black looks, not a mite.
And I felt that bein’ a visitor myself, I could branch out and argue with him to a better advantage to the laws of horspitality than if I wuz master or mistress of the house. So, as I sez, seein’ him determined to cut and slash, I jest boldly waded in.
But, good land! of all the talk, he did go on and talk about the deep and stupendous folly of colonization.
Why, he brung up every argument he could think on aginst the idee, and piled ’em up in front of me. But I jest sot there calmly a knittin’, a seamin’ two and one, and a not bein’ skairt by any of ’em.
And pretty soon—I spoze it wuz seein’ that I looked as calm as a summer day—he sort o’ curbed himself in, as it were, and begun to talk some calmer and composeder.
And sez he, “If there wuz no other insurmountable objection, look at the expense, the enormous cost of taking the blacks to Africa and supporting ’em there till they could become self-supporting.”
And I sez, “Will it make the conundrum any easier to get the answer to, to wait till the black people are twice as numerous? They obey the Bible strictly when it tells ’em to multiply and replenish the earth. In less than twenty years they will outnumber the white race here by a million or more. What will be done then?”
“Keep them under,” sez he. “Let them keep their place, the place the Lord designed them for, as servants to the white man. And then,” sez he, “one white man could control a hundred of the beasts.”
But I sez, “To say nuthin’ of the right or wrong of that matter, that day has gone by. They have tasted the air of freedom, and that sweet air always blows out the flower of liberty, not slavery. You can’t put ’em back in their chains agin. Education and culture and the Emancipation Proclamation has forever done away with that.
“You can never make ’em slaves agin, but you can be their slaves. The white race, so long dominant, if it still cultivates the habits of tyranny, and cruelty, and injustice, it can be made slaves to the dominant black race; for it is, as you well know, only a question of a few years when they will outnumber the white people here.