I Had
Opportunities Of Conversing With Several Of These Freed Negroes, And They
All Expressed Attachment To Their Late Owners, And Spoke Of The Mildness
With Which They Were Treated, Saying That The Great Threat Made Use Of Was
To Send Them "Down South."
The slaves in the northern slave States are a thoughtless, happy set,
spending their evenings in dancing or singing to
The banjo; and 'Oh, carry
me back to Old Virginny,' or 'Susannah, don't you cry for me,' may be
heard on summer evenings rising from the maize and tobacco grounds of
Kentucky. Yet, whether naturally humane instincts may lead to merciful
treatment of the slave, or the same result be accomplished by the rigorous
censorship of public opinion in the border States, apart from the abstract
question of slavery, that system is greatly to be reprobated which gives
power without responsibility, and permits the temporal, yes, the eternal
well-being of another to depend upon the will and caprice of a man, when
the victim of his injustice is deprived of the power of appeal to an
earthly tribunal. Instances of severe treatment on one side, and of
kindness on the other, cannot fairly be brought as arguments for or
against the system; it must be justified or condemned by the undeviating
law of moral right as laid down in divine revelation. Slavery existed in
1850 in 15 out of 31 States, the number of slaves being 3,204,345,
connected by sympathy and blood with 433,643 coloured persons, nominally
free, but who occupy a social position of the lowest grade.
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