Among the Pines | Page 8

to enjoy the fine view it affords of the city and its environs.
I was shortly joined by a lady and gentleman, whose appearance indicated that they were Americans. Some casual remark led us into a conversation, and soon, to our mutual surprise and gratification, we learned that the lady was a dear and long-time friend of my travelling-companion. The acquaintance thus begun, has since grown into a close and abiding friendship.
The reader, with this preamble, can readily imagine my pleasure on learning, as we were seated after our evening meal, around that pleasant fireside in far-off Carolina, that my Paris acquaintance was a favorite niece, or, as he warmly expressed it, "almost a daughter" of my host. This discovery dispelled any lingering feeling of "strangeness" that had not vanished with the first cordial greeting of my new-found friends, and made me perfectly "at home."
The evening wore rapidly away in a free interchange of "news," opinions, and "small-talk," and I soon gathered somewhat of the history of my host. He was born at the North, and his career affords a striking illustration of the marvellous enterprise of our Northern character. A native of the State of Maine, he emigrated thence when a young man, and settled down, amid the pine-forest in that sequestered part of Cottondom. Erecting a small saw-mill, and a log shanty to shelter himself and a few "hired" negroes, he attacked, with his own hands, the mighty pines, whose brothers still tower in gloomy magnificence around his dwelling.
From such beginnings he had risen to be one of the wealthiest land and slave owners of his district, with vessels trading to nearly every quarter of the globe, to the Northern and Eastern ports, Cadiz, the West Indies, South America, and if I remember aright, California. It seemed to me a marvel that this man, alone, and unaided by the usual appliances of commerce, had created a business, rivalling in extent the transactions of many a princely merchant of New York and Boston.
His "family" of slaves numbered about three hundred, and a more healthy, and to all appearance, happy set of laboring people, I had never seen. Well fed, comfortably and almost neatly clad, with tidy and well-ordered homes, exempt from labor in childhood and advanced age, and cared for in sickness by a kind and considerate mistress, who is the physician and good Samaritan of the village, they seemed to share as much physical enjoyment as ordinarily falls to the lot of the "hewer of wood and drawer of water." Looking at them, I began to question if Slavery is, in reality, the damnable thing that some untravelled philanthropists have pictured it. If--and in that "if" my good Abolition friend, is the only unanswerable argument against the institution--if they were taught, if they knew their nature and their destiny, the slaves of such an owner might unprofitably exchange situations with many a white man, who, with nothing in the present or the future, is desperately struggling for a miserable hand-to-mouth existence in our Northern cities. I say "of such an owner," for in the Southern Arcadia such masters are "few and far between"--rather fewer and farther between than "spots upon the sun."
But they are not taught. Public sentiment, as well as State law, prevents the enlightened master, who would fit the slave by knowledge for greater usefulness, from letting a ray of light in upon his darkened mind. The black knows his task, his name, and his dinner-hour. He knows there is a something within him--he does not understand precisely what--that the white man calls his soul, which he is told will not rest in the ground when his body is laid away in the grave, but will--if he is a "good nigger," obeys his master, and does the task allotted him--travel off to some unknown region, and sing hallelujahs to the LORD, forever. He rather sensibly imagines that such everlasting singing may in time produce hoarseness, so he prepares his vocal organs for the long concert by a vigorous discipline while here, and at the same time cultivates instrumental music, having a dim idea that the LORD has an ear for melody, and will let him, when he is tired of singing, vary the exercise "wid de banjo and de bones." This is all he knows; and his owner, however well-disposed he may be, cannot teach him more. Noble, Christian masters whom I have met--have told me that they did not dare instruct their slaves. Some of their negroes were born in their houses, nursed in their families, and have grown up the playmates of their children, and yet they are forced to see them live and die like the brutes. One need not be accused of fanatical abolitionism if he deems such a system a little in