1 SECTION III. Points of diversity in the character of the privileged and the unprivileged classes. 1. COURAGE is one of those chivalrous virtues much boasted of among the freemen of the south. They are brave beyond question. All freemen are so. Courage is a virtue which always exists in the greatest perfection among freemen, because among freemen, it is most esteemed and most cultivated. Courage is essential to the maintenance of liberty. When it happens that freemen are also tyrants, courage is cultivated and fostered for the additional reason that it is essential also to the maintenance of tyranny. What importance is attached to this virtue at the south, may be conjectured from the braggadocio spirit, which so universally prevails there. Listen to southern conversation, or read the southern newspapers, and one would suppose that every mother's son of the free population, was an Orlando Furioso, or a Richard Cieur de Lion at the least. What wonder if courage abound where it is so highly esteemed and so greatly encouraged. The slaves, on the other hand, are cowards. A brave man may be found among them here or there, but cowardice is their general characteristic. If it were not so, the system of slavery would be very short lived. To organize a successful insurrection, something more than mere courage is no doubt necessary. But courage alone is sufficient to produce a series of unsuccessful insurrections, and however individually unsuccessful; a series of insurrections would shortly render the masters' empire not worth preserving. If the slaves are cowards, it is a vice to which they have been diligently trained up from their earliest childhood. Were a tenth part of the pains bestowed to make them brave, which are taken to render them otherwise, they would be as courageous as their masters. The boldest heart very soon becomes subdued, when every indication of spirit, every disposition to stand at bay is shortly visited by the whip, irons, or a prison. 2. The CHASTITY of their women is another chivalrous virtue, much boasted of by the freemen of the south. The southern people have reason to be proud of their women. From the most disgusting vices of the men, they are, as we have mentioned already, in a great measure free, and such active virtue as is to be found at the south, at least the larger portion of it, is to be looked for among the female sex. If however the women have escaped to a certain extent, the blighting influences of tyranny it is because they are sedulously shielded from its worst effects. Chastity like courage is to a great extent, an artificial virtue, the existence of which principally depends upon education and public opinion. Both education and public opinion are stretched to their utmost influence to preserve the chastity of the southern women, while the free and more luxurious indulgence which the men find elsewhere, causes the seduction of free women to be a thing seldom attempted. Among the slaves, a woman, apart from mere natural bashfulness, has no inducement to be chaste; she has many inducements the other way. Her person is her only means of purchasing favors, indulgences, presents. To be the favorite of the master or one of his sons, of the overseer, or even of a driver, is an object of desire, and a situation of dignity. It is as much esteemed among the slaves, as an advantageous marriage would be, among the free. So far from involving disgrace, it confers honor. Besides, where marriage is only a temporary contract, dissolvable at any time, not by the will of the parties alone, but at the caprice and pleasure of the masters, what room is there for any such virtue as chastity? Chastity consists in keeping the sexual appetite under a close restraint except when its indulgence is sanctioned by marriage. But among slaves every casual union, though but for a day, is a marriage. To persons so situated, we cannot justly apply ideas founded upon totally different circumstances. If we choose however to understand by chastity the restriction of one's self to a single partner, chastity is very far from being so rare a virtue among the women of the unprivileged class as is often asserted, and generally supposed. Though the union may be dissolved in a moment, at the slightest caprice of the parties, such separations are much more rare than might be imagined. More husbands and wives among the slaves are separated by the hammer of the auctioneer, than by the united influence of infidelity, disgust, or the desire of change. 3. FRAUD, FALSEHOOD, AND DISHONESTY are represented by the masters, as distinguishing traits in the character of the unprivileged class. This charge is unfounded. It has been shown already, that as between master and slave, from the very nature of that relation, mutual confidence, trust and reliance, are out of the question. To deceive his master is almost the only means of self-defence in the power of the slave. What ground of mutual confidence is it possible to establish between the robber and the robbed? To hold those promises binding which are extorted by force, to maintain that one is obliged to keep faith with a plunderer, is to surrender up, to the hands of violence, through the influence of a weak and cruel superstition, or a piece of miserable and empty sophistry, not the body only, but the soul; not only actions, but the will; the future as well as the present;-it is to strip weakness and suffering of their last defence, and to give omnipotence to tyranny. In their transactions with each other the members of the unprivileged class at the south, are by no means deficient in the great and necessary virtues of truth, honesty and fidelity. The difficulty of inducing them to betray each other is proverbial, and is a matter of grievous complaint among masters and overseers. There are among the slaves, as among all bodies of men, some who set up honesty for sale, and who become instruments of tyranny in the hands of the pri vileged class. There are others shrewd and slippery, upon whom no dependence whatever can be placed, even by their friends and relations. Characters of this sort, are quite as common among the privileged order. Indeed more so. There has been already mentioned that great class of professional gamblers, whose sole business it is to prey upon the community, to inveigle the unwary, and entrap the ignorant. There is no such class among the slaves. There is still another great class among the privileged order, who live almost wholly upon the plunder of their richer neighbors, the receivers, namely, of stolen goods, the keepers of the petty trading stores, scattered throughout the south. They take in the corn, cotton and rice stolen by the slaves, and give in exchange whisky and other luxuries. This class of traders is very large. The severest laws have been enacted to suppress them, but without success, Lynch law is now and then administered upon them in all its severity, but the nuisance cannot be abated. These men, compared with the slaves, are wholly without excuse. They live by constant violations of laws, by constant breaches of a social compact to which they have themselves assented. This is a case in which the receiver, even in a legal point of view, is a thousand times worse than the thief. Yet to speak within bounds, for every five or six acts of theft, (or what is called so,) committed on the part of slaves, there is at least one act of reception committed on the part of some freeman. We may therefore consider it to be reduced to an arithmetical demonstration, that so far as relates to violations of property, the offences of the free are greater than those of the slaves. To this conclusion we must come, even without taking into account the appalling fact that the entire existence of a large part of the privileged class is but one constant, steady violation of all those principles upon which the very idea of property depends, and upon which the virtues of truth, honesty, justice and fidelity must rest for their only sure support. We may apply to the southern 168 DESPOTISM IN AMERICA. slave-holders, a jeu d'esprit of Talleyrand's. A certain person was complaining that every body considered him a worthless, infamous fellow, yet said the complainant, I do not know why, for I have never committed but one fault in my life. "Ah!" said Talleyrand, "but when will that one fault be ended?" To those accustomed to look only at the outside of things, the results to which this chapter has brought us, will no doubt seem strange. It is impossible, they will say, that men whose circumstances are so contradictory, and whose whole appearance is so different, can after all, be so much alike. Such readers will do well to call to mind the lines of Shakspeare, Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr'd gowns, hide all. Plate sin with gold, Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it. That gold however, with which the system of southern slavery is plated, is not the true metal. "Tis but a fairy, shadowy, imaginary gold which cannot cross the running waters of truth, without being changed back again to its original worthlessness. |