Page:Letters on the condition of the African race in the United States.djvu/17

Rh in our stores for the year. The clothing of the men and children was cut out and made by the seamstresses on the plantation, appointed for the purpose. This patriarchal oversight over them, from day to day, and their simple feeling of confidence and love towards their master, has of late years been impinged upon by the diabolical efforts of the abolitionists, who whisper in their ear the envenomed poison of suspicion, hatred, and murder, against their protectors. But nothing charms the negro so effectually from his allegiance, as the hope that, if he can get to the North, and be free, he will not have to work. Twenty years ago, the planters purchased every year barrels of ardent spirits, as part of their negro rations, but now it is rarely ever given to them except by order of the physician. I never remember to have seen a field negro drunk, on the plantation, except on Christmas: and even then not more than one or two, and my father owned nearly a hundred; and I never saw a black woman, who was a slave in Carolina, drunk, in all my life. I grew up, my brother, with the conviction that the Southern slaves were the happiest poor people in the world, because I saw with my own eyes the system pursued towards them on my father s plantation, where they were so numerous, so healthy, so jovial, so contented; and I knew that ail the plantations in South Carolina were governed, more or loss, by the same principles of self-interest and humanity. The abolitionist scoffs at this picture of rational happiness. He says, "We take the same care of our horses and our dogs, and for no other reason than that they are our property." I myself have studied the selfishness of the human heart, until I believe there is greater security in its being the self-interest of our friends, to cherish and take care of us, than perhaps from any other motive. A man may cease to love his wife, his father, his mother, his sisters, his brothers; but who ever heard of his hating, or designedly hurting himself, unless he was a lunatic. Self-love is an undying passion; and so long, therefore, as this principle governs the human heart, the abolitionist may cease his absurd commiseration of the Southern slave. We may, as these Pharisees profess to believe, be divested of every noble social virtue; but we have still remaining too much of the Yankee in us, to hurt our own property, by cruelty or hard work, or any tyrannical oppressions that destroy the health or curtail the lives of our slaves. And let us entreat that the poor wretches, who live and die like dogs in New York, Philadelphia, and other Northern cities, may come in for a small share of that surplus humanity, that seems like a fire in the bones of the abolitionists; that is seeking vent, but not in godlike charities to