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 CHAPTER VIII.

THE CONDITION AND CHARACTER OF THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES OF THE SOUTH.

Since the growth of the cotton demand has doubled the value of slave labour, and with it the pecuniary inducement to prevent negroes from taking care of themselves, hypotheses and easy methods for justifying the everlasting perpetuation of slavery have been multiplied. I have not often conversed with a planter about the condition of the slaves, that he did not soon make it evident, that a number of these were on service in his own mind, naïvely falling back from one to another, if a few inquiries about matters of fact were addressed him without obvious argumentative purpose. The beneficence of slavery is commonly urged by an exposition not only of the diet, and the dwellings, and the jollity, and the devotional eloquence of the negroes, but also by demonstrations of the high mental attainments to which individuals are already found to be arriving. Thus, there is always at hand, some negro mathematician, who is not merely held to be far in advance of the native Africans, but who beats most white men in his quickness and accuracy in calculation, and who is at the same time considered to be so thoroughly trustworthy, that he is constantly employed by his master as an accountant and collecting agent; or some negro whose reputation for ingenuity and skill in the management and repair of engines, sugar-mills, cotton-presses, or other machinery,