Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/309

Rh of the dog: true is it also, that they have a natural tendency to subordination to the white race, and to obey their higher intelligence; and white mothers and black nurses prove continually the exclusive love of the latter for the child of the white. No better foster-mothers, no better nurses, can any one have for their children, than the black woman; and in general no better sick nurses than the blacks, either male or female. They are naturally good-tempered and attached; and if the white “Massa” and “Missis,” as the negroes call their owners, are kind on their part, the relationship between them and “Daddy” and “Mammy,” as the black servants are called, especially if they are somewhat in years, is really good and tender. But neither are circumstances of quite the opposite kind wanting. The tribunals of Carolina, and the better class of the community of Carolina, have yet fresh in their memory, deeds of cruelty done to house-slaves which rival the worst abominations of the old heathen times. Some of the very blackest of these deeds have been done by —— women; by women in the higher class of society in Charleston! Just lately, also, has a rich planter been condemned to two years imprisonment in the house of correction, for his barbarous treatment of a slave. And then it must be borne in mind that the public tribunal does not take cognisance of any other cruelties to slaves, than those which are too horrible and too public to be passed over! When I bring forward these universally-known circumstances in my arguments with the patrons and patronesses of slavery, they reply, “Even in your country, and in all countries, are masters and mistresses sometimes austere to their servants.” To which I reply, “But then they can leave them!” And to this they have nothing to say, but look displeased.

Ah! the curse of slavery, as the common phrase is, has not merely fallen upon the black, but, perhaps, at this moment, still more upon the white, because it has