Our mornings were divided between receiving callers and drives about the city and in the country. The country is flat and sandy, and the only objects are planters' mansions, surrounded with evergreen woods, the gardens exhibiting the tropical yucca, and fenced with hedges of the Cherokee rose. From the lower part of the city glimpses of the main may be had; but the intervening s.p.a.ce is very ugly, except at high tide; an expanse of reeking slime over which large flocks of buzzards are incessantly hovering. On the top of each of the long row of stakes discovered at low water sits a buzzard. A fine is imposed for killing one of these birds, the unsalaried scavengers of the moister districts of the city.

The houses which we visited in returning calls were generally handsome, with capacious piazzas, rich plants and bouquets, and good furniture.

The political bias of the inhabitant was often discoverable from the books on the table, or the prints and casts on the walls. In no society in the world could the division of parties be more distinct, and their alienation more threatening than in Charleston at the time I was there.[15] The Union gentlemen and ladies were dispirited and timid.

They asked one another's opinion whether there was not some mysterious stir among the nullifiers; whether they were not concerting measures for a new defiance of the general government. This anxious watchfulness contrasted strangely with the arrogant bearing of the leading nullifiers. During my stay Mr. Calhoun and his family arrived from Congress; and there was something very striking in the welcome he received, like that of a chief returned to the bosom of his clan. He stalked about like a monarch of the little domain; and there was certainly an air of mysterious understanding between him and his followers, whether there was really any great secret under it or not.

One lady, who had contributed ample amounts of money to the nullification funds, and a catechism to nullification lore, amused while she grieved me by the strength of her political feelings. While calling on her one morning, the conversation turned on prints, and I asked an explanation of a strange-looking one which hung opposite my eye; the portrait of a gentleman, the top of the head and the dress visible, but the face obliterated or covered over. She was only too ready to explain.

It was a portrait of President Jackson, which she had hung up in days when he enjoyed her favour. Since nullification she had covered over the face, to show how she hated him. A stranger hardly knows what to think of a cause whose leaders will flatter and cherish the perpetrators of a piece of petty spite like this; yet this lady is treated as if she were a main pillar of the nullification party.

Footnote 15: For an explanation of nullification, and a short history of the struggle of the nullifiers, see "Society in America," vol. i., p. 92-109.

Some of our mornings were spent in going with the Hayne and Calhoun families to the public library, to a panorama, and to the a.r.s.enal. The library is supported by private subscriptions, and is very creditable to the city, whose zeal about its books might well have been exhausted by the repeated destruction of the library by fire and in the war. We amused ourselves with files of newspapers which have survived all disasters; old London Gazettes and colonial papers extending as far back as 1678.

We visited the a.r.s.enal twice; the second time with Mr. Calhoun and Governor Hayne, when we saw the arms and ammunition, which were not visible the first time, because "the key was not on the premises;" a token that no invasion was immediately expected. There were two bombs brought in by Governor Hayne, and all the warlike apparatus which was made ready during the nullification struggle. It is difficult to believe that Mr. Calhoun seriously meant to go to war with such means as his impoverished state could furnish; but there is no doubt that he did intend it. The ladies were very animated in their accounts of their State Rights Ball, held in the area of the a.r.s.enal, and of their subscriptions of jewels to the war fund. They were certainly in earnest.

The soldiers were paraded in our presence, some eleven or twelve recruits, I believe; and then Mr. Calhoun first, and Governor Hayne afterward, uncovered and addressed them with as much gravity and effusion of patriotic sentiment as if we had been standing on the verge of a battle-field. Some of our party were of Union politics, and they looked exceedingly arch during the speechifying. It will be too sad if this child's play should be turned into bloodshed after all, for the gratification of any man's restless ambition, or in the guilty hope of protracting slavery under the reprobation of the whole of society except a small band of mercenaries.

My chief interest in these expeditions was in the personages who accompanied me. Governor Hayne's name is well known in England from his having furnished the provocation to Webster's renowned speech, exhibiting the const.i.tutional argument against nullification; and from his being afterward the leader of the struggle in South Carolina, while Mr. Calhoun fulfilled the same function in Congress. He is descended from the Haynes whose cruel sufferings in the Revolutionary War are notorious, to the disgrace of the British; one of the two brothers having perished through the miseries of a British prison-ship, and the other having been hanged by Lord Rawdon and Colonel Balfour, under circ.u.mstances which, I believe, justify the horror and reprobation with which the act is viewed by all who have heard the story. It is one of the most dreadful tales of the Revolutionary War, and the English have not been behind the Americans in their feeling with regard to the case.

The circ.u.mstances are briefly these:--

Colonel Isaac Hayne was a peaceful planter at the time of the breaking out of the war. He lived upon his estate all the year round, and was remarkably quiet and domestic in his temper and habits. He served in the American army during the siege of Charleston; and, on the fall of the city, returned to his plantation, under the guarantee of security to person and property shared by all who had capitulated at Charleston. The smallpox broke out in his family; all his children had it; one was dead, and his wife dying, when Colonel Hayne received peremptory orders to repair to the British standard, to take up arms as a British subject, or to surrender himself prisoner at Charleston. He declared that no force should separate him from his dying wife and children, and a.s.serted his inviolability under the capitulation of Charleston. The British officer, Colonel Bellingall, who brought the order, a.s.sured him of his immediate return home if he would repair to Charleston, to give an a.s.surance that he would "demean himself as a British subject while the country should be covered with a British army." Colonel Hayne went, with the written agreement of Colonel Bellingall in his hand. He was, however, detained, and offered the alternative of lasting imprisonment or of signing an unconditional promise to obey orders as a British subject. He declared that he never would bear arms against his country, and was a.s.sured that this act would never be required of him. There were several witnesses to his having signed under this protest and a.s.surance. He returned to his family, finding another of his children dead, and his wife just expiring.

He observed the strictest neutrality while the promise under which he signed was kept. His house was alternately occupied by English and American troops, when the prospects of the republicans began to improve; and he is known to have refused to let his horses be used by friends in the American force; in short, to have kept his engagement like a man of honour. His position was, however, considered too perilous a one, and he was summoned to join the British standard. He considered that this was such a violation of a promise on the part of the British officers as set him free. He joined his countrymen, fought, and was captured. He was imprisoned at Charleston for some weeks till Lord Rawdon came to town, and then, after two days' notice, brought before a court of inquiry, consisting of four general officers and five captains. Having no idea that this was anything more than a preliminary measure, and finding that the members of the court were not sworn, nor the witnesses examined on oath, Colonel Hayne called no witnesses, and the proceedings closed without his being aware that he had gone through an affair of life or death. He was wholly taken by surprise, therefore, at the news conveyed to him by letter that he was to die on the gibbet the next day but one.

He was respited for forty-eight hours, in order that he might see his children, and in consideration of the "humane treatment shown by him to the British prisoners who fell into his hands," and he spent the interval in the discharge of business and affectionate intercourse with his friends. His chief regret was, that this act would probably provoke retaliation, and so lead to the shedding of much innocent blood. He required his eldest son, a boy of thirteen, to be present at his execution, in order to receive his body, and see that it was laid in the family burial-place. The boy, frantic with grief, declared that he should not long survive him; and it is not surprising that he shortly became insane and died. Colonel Hayne met his fate with a tranquillity which convinced his enemies that (to use their own words), "though he did not die in a good cause, he must, at least, have acted from a persuasion of its being so."

Such stories are very painful, but they ought not to be forgotten. The horrors of colonial war may not be over; and it is well that the conflicts of duty and affection which can take place only in wars of this character should be remembered, while Great Britain has colonies which she may oppress, and n.o.ble subjects, like Colonel Hayne, whom she may be even now alienating, and whose contrariety of affections she may be yet again driven or tempted to solve in blood.

The present representative of the family was made speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives at the age of twenty-seven. He was afterward attorney-general of the state, a senator in Congress, and governor of the state. During the preparations for war in 1832, he was the soul of every movement. He is now considered to be deeply involved in the Southern transactions relating to the acquisition of Texas, whatever these may in reality be, and to have linked his fortunes with the slavery question. When I saw him he was forty-four years of age, with a robust, active frame, a lively, pleasant countenance, and very engaging manners, with much of the eagerness of the schoolboy mixed with the ease of the gentleman. He can do everything better than reason, as appeared in the senatorial conflict, in which he was ground to powder by the tremendous weight and force of Webster's const.i.tutional argument and sound declamation. Governor Hayne can state clearly, enforce ardently, ill.u.s.trate gracefully, and boast magnificently, but he cannot reason.

His best friends are probably the most anxious to admit this; for there is such want of reason in his present course of opposition to the first principles on which society is founded, and in his attachment to wornout feudal inst.i.tutions, that the observer, however friendly, finds himself reduced to the alternative of supposing this busy mind perverted by unholy pa.s.sions or by an unbalanced imagination.

Governor Hamilton is less known at a distance, but he is, perhaps, a yet more perfect representative of the Southern gentleman. He is handsome, and his manners have all the grace without much of the arrogance of the bearing of his cla.s.s. I was much struck, too, with his generous appreciation of the powers and virtues of the great men of every party at Washington; a moral grace which I should have been glad to see shared in a greater degree by some of his neighbours. Governor Hamilton has done what he could to impair the favourable impressions he makes upon all who know him by the atrocious report he issued in 1835, as chairman of a committee of the South Carolina Legislature appointed to consider what steps should be taken in defence of "the peculiar domestic inst.i.tutions of the South." This report is unconst.i.tutional in its requisitions, and savage in its spirit towards the abolitionists.

With these gentlemen, their friends, and the ladies of their families, we saw many sights and pa.s.sed many pleasant hours; and with gentlemen and ladies of the opposite party we spent other portions of our leisure.

I was told much of the Poorhouse, rather in a tone of boasting; and I was anxious to see what a poorhouse could be in a region where all labourers were private property, and where pauperism would therefore seem to be obviated. Infirmity, vice, and orphanhood keep up a small amount of pauperism even here, reducing capitalists to a state of dependance. There were about one hundred and twenty inmates when I visited the inst.i.tution, and the number was soon to be reduced by the periodical clearance made by sending the children to the Orphan-house, and the insane to the State asylum at Columbia. The intemperate and vagrants were employed in coffin-making and stone-breaking. By a slight stretch of the law, persons found drunk are sent here and locked up for a month. We saw two respectable-looking men who had been brought in intoxicated the day before, and who looked duly ashamed of their situation.

The Orphan-house has been established about forty years, and it contained, at the time of my visit, two hundred children. As none but whites are admitted, it is found to be no encouragement to vice to admit all dest.i.tute children, whether orphans or not; for the licentiousness of the South takes the women of colour for its victims. The children in this establishment are taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the girls sewing; but the prejudice against work appears as much here as anywhere. No active labour goes on; the boys do not even garden. No employment is attempted which bears any resemblance to what is done by slaves. The boys are apprenticed out to trades at fourteen, and the girls to mantuamaking, almost the only employment in which a white Southern woman can earn a subsistence. The children are taken in from the age of two years, but they generally enter at the ages of four, five, or six. I was rather surprised to see them badged, an anti-republican practice which had better be abolished; but I wondered the less when I observed the statue of Pitt still standing in the courtyard, with the right arm shot off in the war, however. There is a good-sized church connected with this establishment, which was well filled on the afternoon when I went with the family of a friend, who was taking his turn with his brother clergy to preach.

Charleston is the place in which to see those contrasting scenes of human life brought under the eye which moralists gather together for the purpose of impressing the imagination. The stranger has but to pa.s.s from street to street, to live from hour to hour in this city, to see in conjunction the extremes between which there is everywhere else a wide interval. The sights of one morning I should remember if every other particular of my travels were forgotten. I was driven round the city by a friend whose conversation was delightful all the way. Though I did not agree in all his views of society, the thoughtfulness of his mind and the benevolence of his exertions betokened a healthy state of feeling, and gave value to all he said. He had been a friend of the lamented Grimke; and he showed me the house where Grimke lived and died, and told me much of him; of the n.o.bleness of his character, the extent of his attainments, and how, dying at fifty-four, he had lived by industry a long life. My mind was full of the contemplation of the heights which human beings are destined to reach, when I was plunged into a new scene; one which it was my own conscientious choice to visit, but for which the preceding conversation had ill-prepared me. I went into the slave market, a place which the traveller ought not to avoid to spare his feelings. There was a table on which stood two auctioneers, one with a hammer, the other to exhibit "the article" and count the bids. The slaves for sale were some of them in groups below, and some in a long row behind the auctioneers. The sale of a man was just concluding when we entered the market. A woman, with two children, one at the breast, and another holding by her ap.r.o.n, composed the next lot. The restless, jocose zeal of the auctioneer who counted the bids was the most infernal sight I ever beheld. The woman was a mulatto; she was neatly dressed, with a clean ap.r.o.n and a yellow head-handkerchief. The elder child clung to her. She hung her head low, lower, and still lower on her breast, yet turning her eyes incessantly from side to side, with an intensity of expectation which showed that she had not reached the last stage of despair. I should have thought that her agony of shame and dread would have silenced the tongue of every spectator; but it was not so. A lady chose this moment to turn to me and say, with a cheerful air of complacency, "You know my theory, that one race must be subservient to the other. I do not care which; and if the blacks should ever have the upper hand, I should not mind standing on that table, and being sold with two of my children." Who could help saying within himself, "Would you were! so that that mother were released!" Who could help seeing in vision the blacks driving the whites into the field, and preaching from the pulpits of Christian churches the doctrines now given out there, that G.o.d has respect of persons; that men are to hold each other as property, instead of regarding each other as brethren; and that the right interpretation of the golden rule by the slaveholder is, "Do unto your slaves as you would wish your master to do unto you if you were a slave!" A little boy of eight or nine years old, apparently, was next put up alone. There was no bearing the child's look of helplessness and shame. It seemed like an outrage to be among the starers from whom he shrunk, and we went away before he was disposed of.

We next entered a number of fine houses, where we were presented with flowers, and entertained with lively talk about the small affairs of gay society, which to little minds are great. To me every laugh had lost its gayety, every courtesy had lost its grace, all intercourse had lost its innocence. It was a relief to think of Grimke in his grave, escaped from the h.e.l.l in which we were pent. If there be a scene which might stagger the faith of the spirit of Christianity itself; if there be an experience which might overthrow its serenity, it is the transition from the slavemarket to the abodes of the slavemasters, bright with sunshine, and gay with flowers, with courtesies, and mirth.

If the moral gloom which oppresses the spirit of the stranger were felt by the residents, of course this condition of society would not endure another day. Much trouble is experienced, and there are many sighs over the system; but the anxiety is not to any great number what it was to the sisters of Grimke; such a poisoner of life as to induce them to sacrifice property, home, friends, and repose, in order to obtain ease of mind for themselves, and to do something towards destroying the curse by which their native region is blighted. Every day shows how many mansions there are in this h.e.l.l; how variously the universally allowed evil visits minds of different strength and discernment. All suffer, from the frivolous and sophisticated child to the far-seeing and disciplined saint. The difficulty is to have patience with the diversity, and to wait, as G.o.d waits, till the moral gloom strikes upon every heart, and causes every eye to turn for light where some already see it. At the same hour when the customary sins of the slavemarket were being perpetrated, hundreds of the little people of Charleston were preparing for their childish pleasures--their merry dancing-schools, their juvenile fancy b.a.l.l.s--ordering their little slaves about, and allowing themselves to be fanned by black attendants while reposing in preparation for the fatigues of the evening; ministers of the Gospel were agreeing to deprive persons of colour of all religious education; a distant Lynch mob was outraging the person of a free and innocent citizen; elegant ladies were administering hospitality, and exchanging gossip and sentiment; and Angelina Grimke was penning the letter which contains the following pa.s.sages, a private letter to a friend who was shortly to undergo the strengthening process of being mobbed:--

"I can hardly express to thee the deep and solemn interest with which I have viewed the violent proceedings of the last few weeks. Although I expected opposition, yet I was not prepared for it so soon; it took me by surprise, and I greatly feared abolitionists would be driven back in the first onset, and thrown into confusion. So fearful was I, that, though I clung with unflinching firmness to our principles, yet I was afraid of even opening one of thy papers, lest I should see some indications of compromise, some surrender, some palliation. Under these feelings I was urged to read thy appeal to the citizens of Boston.

Judge, then, what were my feelings on finding that my fears were utterly groundless, and that thou stoodst firm in the midst of the storm, determined to suffer and to die rather than yield one inch.

"Religious persecution always begins with mobs. It is always unprecedented in the age or country in which it commences, and, therefore, there are no laws by which reformers can be punished; consequently, a lawless band of unprincipled men determine to take the matter into their own hands, and act out in mobs what they know are the principles of a large majority of those who are too high in church and state to condescend to mingle with them, though they secretly approve and rejoice over their violent measures. The first Christian martyr was stoned by a lawless mob; and if we look at the rise of various sects, Methodists, Friends, &c., we shall find that mobs began the persecution against them, and that it was not until after the people had spoken out their wishes that laws were framed to fine, imprison, or destroy them.

Let us, then, be prepared for the enactment of laws, even in our free states, against abolitionists. And how ardently has the prayer been breathed, that G.o.d would prepare us for all that he is preparing for us!

"My mind has been especially turned towards those who are standing in the forefront of the battle, and the prayer has gone up for their preservation; not the preservation of their lives, but the preservation of their minds in humility and patience, faith, hope, and _charity_. If persecution is the means which G.o.d has ordained for the accomplishment of this great end, emanc.i.p.ation, then, in dependance upon him for strength to bear it, I feel as if I could say, 'Let it come;' for it is my deep, solemn, deliberate conviction, that this is a cause worth dying for.

"At one time I thought this system would be overthrown in blood, with the confused noise of the warrior; but a hope gleams across my mind that our blood will be spilt instead of the slaveholders'; our lives will be taken, and theirs spared. I say 'a hope,' for, of all things, I desire to be spared the anguish of seeing our beloved country desolated with the horrors of a servile war."

The writer of this letter was born into the system, under the same circ.u.mstances with the ladies who repeatedly asked me if I did not find that the slaves were very happy. So widely different are the influences of the same circ.u.mstances upon different minds!

Our evening engagements were as strangely contrasted as those of the morning. We were at parties where we heard loud talk of justice and oppression; appeals to the eternal principles of the one, when the tariff was the subject, and expressions of the most pa.s.sionate detestation of the other, which might, but for the presence of black faces in the rooms, lead a stranger to suppose that he was in the very sanctuary of human rights. We were at a young heiress's first ball, where every guest was presented with a bouquet on entering; where the young ladies waltzed, and the young gentlemen gave a loose to their spirits, and all who were present had kindly greetings for the stranger.

Nothing could be gayer than the external aspect of these entertainments; but it is impossible for the stranger to avoid being struck with the anxiety which shows itself through it all. I think I never was in society in any of the Southern cities without being asked what I would do if I had a legacy of slaves, or told, in vindictiveness or sorrow, that the prosperity of the North was obtained at the expense of the South. I was never in Southern society without perceiving that its characteristic is a want of repose. It is restlessly gay or restlessly sorrowful. It is angry or exulting; it is hopeful or apprehensive. It is never content; never in such a state of calm satisfaction as to forget itself. This peculiarity poisons the satisfaction of the stranger in the midst of the free and joyous hospitality to which he would otherwise surrender himself with inconsiderate delight. While everything is done that can be conceived of to make you happy, there is a weight pulling at your heartstrings, because you see that other hearts are heavy, and the n.o.bler the heavier. While the host's little child comes to you at first sight, and holds up her mouth for a kiss, and offers to tell you a story, and pours out all her mirth and all her generosity upon you, the child's father tells you that there is a dark prospect before these young creatures, and Heaven knows what lot is in store for them. Your vigilance is kept active by continual suggestions that society is composed of two cla.s.ses, which entertain a mortal dread of each other.

If ever you forget this for an hour, it is recalled by the sight of a soldier at the corner of a street, of a decaying mansion or deserted estate, or of some anti-republican arrangement for social or domestic defence. You reproach yourself because you are anxious and cannot be deceived; and feel as if it were ingrat.i.tude to your entertainers not to think them the secure and happy people which, in alternation with their complaints of all the external world, they a.s.sure you they are.

Our evenings were diversified with attendance upon phrenological lectures--which, however, soon ceases to be a variety, from the absolute sameness of all courses of lectures on that subject--with readings at home, and with a visit to a scene which I was strongly urged not to omit, the Sat.u.r.day night's market held by the slaves.

I should have been sorry to miss this spectacle. The slaves enjoy the amus.e.m.e.nt and profit yielded by this market. They sit in rows, by lamplight, some with heaps of fruit and vegetables before them, or surrounded by articles of their own manufacture: boxes, bedsteads, baskets, and other handiworks, very cheap, and of good workmanship. The bananas, pines, imported apples, and oranges, which are seen in great abundance, are usually the property of the master; while the manufactured articles, made at spare hours, are nominally the slave's own. Some are allowed to make use of their leisure in preparing for the market, on condition of bringing their masters six dollars each per week, retaining whatever surplus they may gain. I could not learn the consequence of failing to bring in the six dollars per week. They enjoy the fun and bustle of the market, and look with complacency on any white customers who will attend it. Their activity and merriment at market were pointed out to me as an a.s.surance of their satisfaction with their condition, their conviction that their present position is the one they were made for, and in which their true happiness is to be found.

At the very same moment I was shown the ruins of the church of St.

Philip, destroyed by fire, as they frowned in the rear of the lamplight; and I was informed that the church had once before been on fire, but had been saved by the exertions of a slave, who "had his liberty given him for a reward."

"A reward!" said I. "What! when the slaves are convinced that their true happiness lies in slavery?"

The conversation had come to an awkward pa.s.s. A lady advanced to the rescue, saying that some few, too many, were haunted by a pernicious fancy, put into their heads by others, about liberty; a mere fancy, which, however, made them like the idea of freedom.

"So the benefactor of the city was rewarded by being indulged, to his own hurt, in a pernicious fancy?"

"Why ... yes."

My impressions of Charleston may easily be gathered from what I have said. It seems to me a place of great activity, without much intellectual result; of great gayety, without much ease and pleasure. I am confident that, whatever might be the reason, the general mind was full of mystery and anxiety at the time of my visit; and that some hearts were glowing with ambitious hopes, and others sinking in fears, more or less clearly defined, of the political crisis which seems to be now at hand. These are the influences which are educating the youth of Charleston, more powerfully than all schools and colleges, and all books; inducing a reliance on physical rather than moral force, and strengthening attachment to feudal notions of honour and of every kind of good; notions which have no affinity with true republican morals. The prospects of the citizens are "dark every way," as some declared; for the rising generation must either ascend, through a severe discipline and prodigious sacrifices, to a conformity with republican principles, or descend into a condition of solitary feudalism, neither sanctioned by the example nor cheered by the sympathy of the world; but, on the contrary, regarded with that compa.s.sion which is precisely the last species of regard which the feudal spirit is able to endure.

We left Charleston in company with Mr. Calhoun and his family. The great nullifier told me many and long stories of his early days. Not being aware of my strong impressions respecting his present views and purposes, he could have no idea of the intense interest with which I listened to his accounts of the first kindling of his burning mind. He was five years old, standing between his father's knees, when his first political emotions stirred within him, awakened by his parent's talk of the colony and of free times just after the Revolution. If some good angel had at that moment whispered the parent, inspiring him to direct that young ambition to the ultimate grandeur of meek service, to animate that high spirit to a moral conflict with all human wrongs, we might already have owed to a mind so energetic the redemption of the negro race from the affliction, and of the republic from the disgrace of slavery, instead of mourning over the dedication of such powers to the propagation and exasperation of the curse. I feared how it would be; what part he would take in the present struggle between the two principles of greatness, physical force with territorial conquest, and moral power shown in self-conquest. I feared that Mr. Calhoun would organize and head the feudal party, as he has done; but I never had any fears that that party would prevail. When we parted at Branchville he little knew--he might have been offended if he had known--with what affectionate solicitude those whom he left behind looked on into his perilous political path. I am glad we could not foresee how soon our fears would be justified. Mr. Calhoun is at present insisting that the pirate colony of Texas shall be admitted into the honourable American Union; that a new impulse shall thereby be given to the slavetrade, and a new extension to slavery; and that his country shall thereby surrender her moral supremacy among the nations for a gross and antiquated feudal ambition. He vows, taking the whole Union to witness, that these things shall be. The words have publicly pa.s.sed his pen and his lips, "Texas shall be annexed to the United States." His best friends must hope that the whole world will say, "It shall not."

RESTLESS SLAVES.

"O! das Leben, Vater, Hat Reize, die wir nie gekannt. Wir haben Des schonen Lebens ode Kutse nur Wie ein umirrend Raubervolk befahren.

Was in den innern Thalern Kostliches Das land verbirgt, O! davon--davon ist Auf unsrer wilden Fahrt uns nichts erschienen."

SCHILLER.

"We ask But to put forth our strength, our human strength, All starting fairly, all equipped alike, Gifted alike, and eagle-eyed, true-hearted."

PARACELSUS.

The traveller in America hears on every hand of the fondness of slaves for slavery. If he points to the little picture of a runaway prefixed to advertis.e.m.e.nts of fugitives, and repeated down whole columns of the first newspaper that comes to hand, he is met with anecdotes of slaves who have been offered their freedom, and prefer remaining in bondage.

Both aspects of the question are true, and yet more may be said on both sides. The traveller finds, as he proceeds, that suicides are very frequent among slaves; and that there is a race of Africans who will not endure bondage at all, and who, when smuggled from Africa into Louisiana, are avoided in the market by purchasers, though they have great bodily strength and comeliness. When one of this race is accidentally purchased and taken home, he is generally missed before twenty-four hours are over, and found hanging behind a door or drowned in the nearest pond. The Cuba slaveholders have volumes of stories to tell of this race, proving their incapacity for slavery. On the other hand, the traveller may meet with a few negroes who have returned into slaveland from a state of freedom, and besought their masters to take them back.

These seeming contradictions admit of an easy explanation. Slaves are more or less degraded by slavery in proportion to their original strength of character or educational discipline of mind. The most degraded are satisfied, the least degraded are dissatisfied with slavery. The lowest order prefer release from duties and cares to the enjoyment of rights and the possession of themselves; and the highest order have a directly opposite taste. The mistake lies in not perceiving that slavery is emphatically condemned by the conduct of both.

The stories on the one side of the question are all alike. The master offers freedom--of course, to the worst of his slaves--to those who are more plague than profit. Perhaps he sends the fellow he wants to get rid of on some errand into a free state, hoping that he will not return. The man comes back; and, if questioned as to why he did not stay where he might have been free, he replies that he knows better than to work hard for a precarious living when he can be fed by his master without anxiety of his own as long as he lives. As for those who return after having been free, they are usually the weak-minded, who have been persuaded into remaining in a free state, where they have been carried in attendance on their masters' families, and who want courage to sustain their unprotected freedom. I do not remember ever hearing of the return of a slave who, having long nourished the idea and purpose of liberty, had absconded with danger and difficulty. The prosecution of such a purpose argues a strength of mind worthy of freedom.