Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/337

 be all very sincere, but for us in the south, with so many living evidences of our frailty multiplying about us in every direction, to attempt to make a bugbear of amalgamation, or to wink it into non-existence, by any ostrich-like process of sticking our heads into the sand, and refusing to recognize as a fact what every body knows, and what is testified to by the varying complexion of every considerable family of slaves in the country, is certainly a very great absurdity.

"For my part, I like to see a little consistency. We southerners defend slavery because, as we say, it is a law of nature that when two races are brought together in the same community, the stronger and nobler race should predominate over the weaker. But if, in such a case, it is the law of nature that the men of the weaker race should be made slaves of by those of the stronger, is it not just as much also a law of nature that the women of the weaker race should become concubines to the men of the stronger? Does not it always so operate? and is not that the means which nature takes gradually to extinguish the inferior race, and to substitute an improved, mixed race in the place of it?

"Some of us undertake to defend slavery out of the Bible, and to justify it by the example of the patriarchs. Very well; if the example of the patriarchs is to justify me in holding slaves, will it not also justify our democratic candidate for the vice-presidency in raising up to himself a family by the help of his maid servants?

"In fact, sir," said he, turning to me, who had taken an early opportunity to avow myself an Englishman, "it is precisely because our democratic candidate for the vice-presidency follows the example of the patriarchs a little too closely, that all this hue and cry is raised against him. "It is not his taste for black women, it is not his family of colored children, — perhaps these innocent gentlemen here from the north know nothing about the matter, but, if so, any white