Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/162

148 his best friends. I mentioned some undoubted instances of cruelty to slaves; he acknowledged that such instances might very rarely happen, but said that in general the masters were much more to be pitied than the negroes. A lady, who had been in South Carolina when an insurrection was apprehended, related several anecdotes concerning the alarm that prevailed there at the time: and added, "I often wish that none of my friends lived in a slave State." "Why should you be anxious?" rejoined the Southern gentleman; "You know that they have built a strong citadel in the heart of the city, to which all the inhabitants can repair, in case of insurrection." "So," said I, "they have built a citadel to protect them from their happy, contented servants—a citadel against their best friends!" I could not but be amused at the contradictions that occurred during this conversation.

That emancipation has in several instances been effected with safety has been already shown. But allowing that there is some danger in discontinuing slavery, is there not likewise danger in continuing it? In one case, the danger, if there were any, would soon be subdued; in the other, it is continually increasing.

The planter tells us that the slave is very happy, and bids us leave him as he is. If laughter is a sign of happiness, the Irishman, tumbling in the same mire as his pigs, is happy. The merely sensual man is no doubt merry and heedless; but who would call him happy? Is it not a fearful thing to keep immortal beings in a state like beasts? The more the senses are subjected to the moral and intellectual powers, the happier man is,—the more we learn to sacrifice the present to the future, the higher do we rise in the scale of existence. The negro may often enjoy himself, like the dog when he is not beaten, or the hog when he is not starved; but let not this be called happiness.

How far the slave laws are conducive to the enjoyment of those they govern, each individual can judge for himself. In the Southern papers, we continually see pictures of runaway negroes, and sometimes the advertisements identify them by scars, or by letters branded upon