"This is one effect of slavery. It takes mothers, wives, daughters, away from occupations which, though honorable, do not always elevate them in the eyes of the other sex. Perhaps there is no value (and some will say it) in all this; that every labor and service is right and good for woman; and that we are to prefer a state of society where woman does these things with her own hands, instead of having them done for her, and that this is our only safeguard against luxury and degeneracy. I will not debate it. I am only showing that, tried by an ordinary test,—the position of woman,—Southerners are really not barbarians."
"I verily believe," said Mrs. North, "that if you take the Southern constitution and give it a Northern training, the result is as perfect a specimen of man or woman as is to be found on earth."
"People at the North," said I, "may, in their zeal against slavery, make light of the abounding sustenance which the slaves enjoy, and call it a low and gross thing in comparison with 'freedom;' but, in the view of all political economists and publicists, how to feed the lower classes is a great problem. It is solved in slavery.
"There is another topic," I added, "which is interesting and important.
"Here," said I, taking a newspaper-slip from my wallet, "is something which fairly made me weep. It is a picture of one of our poor, virtuous, honest New England homes, in which I would rather dwell and suffer, than be an 'oppressor' with my hundreds of slaves, and wealth counted by hundreds of thousands. A slave-holder, blessed be God, is not a synonyme of 'oppressor;' nor are the slaves as a matter of course 'oppressed.' Our people to a great extent think otherwise, and it is useful to see how we appear to others when this error leads us into folly. This little picture in the newspaper-slip gives us a transient look into an abode whose honest poverty and want are made more painful by evil-doing under the influence of fanaticism."
I then read to my friends the following from a Southern paper;—I here omit the names which are given in full:—
"The touching letter which was found on the body of —— ——, one of the insurgents, from his sister in ——, ——, has been published. The following paragraph in that letter is a suggestive one:
"'Would you come home if you had the money to come with? Tell me what it would cost. Oh! I would be unspeakably happy if it were in my power to send you money, but we have been very poor this winter. I have not earned a half-dollar this winter. Mattie has had a very good place, where she has had seventy-five cents a week; she has not spent any of it in the family, only a very little for mother. Father has had very small pay, but I think he has more now; he is a watchman on the —— ——, that runs from here to ——.'
"Here, says the Southern editor, is a family, one of thousands of families in New England in similar circumstances, where one daughter thinks it a 'very good place' where she can get seventy-five cents a week; another has not earned a half-dollar during the winter, and all are 'very poor;' yet the son and brother goes off and deserts a mother and sisters thus situated,—a mother and sisters who, though poor, have evidently the most affectionate feelings and tender sensibilities,—for the purpose of liberating a class of people, not one of whom knows anything of the want or privation from which his own family is suffering, or who would not look without contempt upon such remuneration as seemed the height of good fortune to the destitute sisters and mother of this abolitionist. When we bear in mind the intelligence and sensibilities which characterize the wives and daughters of the poorest classes equally with the richest in New England, it is most amazing that men should overlook such misery at their own doors—nay, should forsake their own kith and kin who are suffering under it—the mother who bore them, the sisters who love them with all a sister's tender and solicitous love, and run off to emancipate the fattest, sleekest, most contented and unambitious race under heaven."
"This shows," said I, "how God has set one thing over against another, in this world. You and Mrs. Worth and myself would rather be the poor honest 'watchman,' or earn our 'seventy-five cents a week,' with 'Mattie,' or even, with the loving sister who writes this letter, 'not' have 'earned a half-dollar this winter,' than be the 'sleekest' of well-fed slaves.