Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/72

 great temptation to him. Besides, he hoped to secure the good graces of colonel Moore, and expected by his assistance, to get into the way of gaining a living respectably; — at least, as respectably as any poor man can, in that country. He not only quieted his conscience with the idea that, if he did not betray me, somebody else would, — but he had made terms with colonel Moore, for my benefit; and actually seemed to have flattered himself into the notion, that he was doing me a favor by betraying me.

There is many a gentleman in slave-holding America, for anti-republican as it may seem, in no part of the world is the distinction between gentlemen and the common people, more distinctly marked, — who would consider it an insult to be compared with Jemmy Gordon, but whose whole life is a continued practice of the very principles upon which that man acted, when he made up his mind to play the traitor. Many is the gentleman in slave-holding America, who knows full well, — and in the secret recesses of his own soul, most unequivocally acknowledges, — that to keep his fellow men in bondage, is a gross, flagrant, highhanded violation of the first and clearest principles of justice and equity, — a practice, abstractly considered, fully more criminal than piracy or highway robbery. Slavery, in the abstract, he acknowledges to himself and to others, to be totally indefensible. But then his slaves are his estate — and he cannot live, like a gentleman, without them. Besides, he treats his servants particularly well, — so very well, that he does not hesitate to argue that they are much happier as slaves, than freedom under any form, could possibly make them!

When men of sense and education, can satisfy themselves with such wretched sophistry as this, let us learn to have some charity for poor Jemmy Gordon.





was past noon before we arrived at Spring-Meadow, where colonel Moore had been, for some time, impatiently