"Oh, some one must go with you. You shall not go alone."
"I do not wish to go at all. I shall see nothing in the South to please me. Those magnificent plantations of rice, sugar, and cotton, those lordly palaces, embowered in orange trees, those queenly magnolia groves, and all the thousand splendors that cover the coast with loveliness, will but recall to my mind the melancholy fact that slave-labor produces the whole. I shall fancy that some poor heart-broken negro man, or some hopeless mother or lonely wife watered those fields with tears. Oh, that the dropping of those sad eyes had, like the sowing of the dragon's teeth, produced a band of armed, bristling warriors, strong enough to conquer all the tyrants and liberate the captives!"
"This can never be accomplished suddenly. It must be the slow and gradual work of years. Like all schemes of reformation, it moves but by inches. Wise legislators have proposed means for the final abolition of slavery; but, though none have been deemed practicable, I look still for the advent of the day when the great sun shall look goldenly down upon the emancipation of this dusky tribe, and when the word slave shall nowhere find expression upon the lips of Christian men."
"When do you predict the advent of that millennial day?"
"I fear it is far distant; yet is it pleasant to think that it will come, no matter at how remote an epoch."
"Distant is it only because men are not thoroughly Christianized. No man that will willingly hold his brother in bondage is a Christian. Moreover, the day is far off in the future, because of the ignorant pride of men. They wish to send the poor negro away to the unknown land from whence his ancestors were stolen. We virtually say to the Africans, now you have cultivated and made beautiful our continent, we have no further use for you. You have grown up, it is true, beneath the shadow of our trees, you were born upon our soil, your early associations are here. Your ignorance precludes you from the knowledge of the excellence of any other land: yet for all this we take no care, it is our business to drive you hence. Cross the ocean you must. Find a home in a strange country; lay your broad shoulder to the work, and make for yourself an interest there. What wonder is it, if the poor, ignorant negro shakes his head mournfully, and says: "No, I would rather stay here; I am a slave, it is true, but then I was born here, and here I will be buried. I am tightly kept, have a master and a mistress, but then I know what this is. Hard to endure, I grant it—but then it is known to me. I can bear on a little longer, till death sets me free. No, this is my native shore; here let me stay." Their very ignorance begets a kind of philosophy that
"Makes them rather bear those ills they have,
Than fly to others that they know not of."
Now, why, I ask, have they not as much right to remain here as we have? This is their birthplace as well as ours. We are, likewise, descendants of foreigners. If we drive them hence, what excuse have we for it? Our forefathers were not the aborigines of this country. As well might the native red men say to us: "Fly, leave the Western continent, 'tis our home; we will not let you stay here. You have cultivated it, now we will enjoy it. Go and labor elsewhere." What would we think of this? Yet such is our line of conduct toward those poor creatures, who have toiled to adorn our homes. Then again, we allow the Irish, Germans, and Hungarians, to dwell among us. Why ban the African?"
"These, my young friend, are questions that have puzzled the wisest brains."