Page:Letters on the condition of the African race in the United States.djvu/13

Rh supposed to be descended from Shem, the white man from Japheth, and the black man from Ham. If so, the prophecy has been literally fulfilled in America. For we dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan is our servant. But another truce, my brother, to these reflections, that engage my thoughts night and day. In my next letter, I will recall the happy condition of my father's numerous slaves, and then contrast them with the degraded class of negroes in the Northern cities. In the mean time, do not imagine that, because I live in the North, I am not a Southerner in all my aspirations. No! I am proud that I was born in South Carolina; and, whatever politicians find it to their interest to say to the contrary, there is no people in the United States, or in the world, who are more refined, intelligent, magnanimous, self-respecting, and bold in defence of their principles, and exalted in their conceptions of right and wrong towards God and man, than the people of South Carolina.

, Sept. 20, 1851. To my last letter, my dear brother, I promised to write off for you a reminiscence of the happy condition of my father's numerous slaves, on our plantation in South Carolina, and then to contrast it with that of the "fugitives from labor" who have fled to the Northern cities. I can speak certainly, however, only of the condition of this degraded class in Philadelphia, and in New York, where I have been on a visit of several months, and took some pains to ascertain all the facts, of which you shall be duly informed. How I do love to recall the patriarchal responsibility, and tenderness, my father felt for his poor, ignorant, dependent slaves. My earliest recollections are fraught with the happiness with which his negroes sallied out in the fields, when it did not rain, or bounded into the cotton-house, when the weather was inclement, to perform their daily tasks, in cleaning the cotton for market; how they sported their jokes together when at work, and returned home singing, after their specified healthy labors were done. They all had their comfortable houses, that comprised a chamber for each family, and a sitting-room, from which towered up a capacious chimney, and the said room