OCR Text |
Show "~-- 62 DESPOTJSJ\1 . . . 10 furnish leather enough not died durmg the wmt~r 1 This story though to supply the slaves Wit J l~:iii serve to give an ide(!. perhaps a littl~ exaggerate of the sonth j and he who of the domestic ceono~y 1d horses yearly drop in ]\now:; how ~1any mu es :~ion over-work, and the the ~urrow, throughrh~~~:~he sh~ves, emulous of their abus1vc treatment \\h 1 creatures in their power; masters, heap upon lt ec~~ltion of southern cattle in he who has seen ~;~ hundreds actually starved to the month of Ma\ . 'l are alive a mere anatomy of de~th, and those \\~~1~rdl~ sub;tance enough to cast skm and bones, '~\, with feeble steps, and woeful a shadow, se~rc ~ gs car or two of withered grass, counten~nce, o~ c c~ their miserable existence; he wherewith to protra h. would not much care to who has seen these t mgs, 1 have his life or his sustenance depcndenlt ur~r It lC good econ~my of a management so utter y t lfl less and unfeelmg. SF.CTION Vll. The treatmeJtl of American slaves, coJtsidered as men. There arc some people whose sympat111ie~t~~~yb~~~ excited npon the subject o[ slavery, w IO 1 t O;lly bo sa tis fLed that the slaves have ~nough .to. eat~ think it is all very well, and that nothing more IS be said, or done. . h nl or chief If slaves were merely annnals, w ose ~- t . bodily enjoyment consisted in the gratificatiOn [ t !Cir in this U];petites, the re would be some show ol ~t~~~d bruti· conclusion. But in fact, however crus lC beat with tied they arc still men ;· men whose blosomt s ell with the 's ame passi.O ns as our. v11 • whose tear s sw · O\ ' d d . e to im· the same aspirations)-the same ar ent estr IN AI\TEHICA. 63 prove their condition; the same wishes for what they have not i the same indiflCrence towards what they have i the same restless love of social sn periorit y; the same greediness of acquisition ; the same desire to know i the same impatience of all external control. The excitement which the singular case of Casper Hauser produced a few years since, in Germany, is not yet forgotten. From the representations of that enigmatical per1'onage, it was believed that those from whose custody he declared himself to have escaped, had endeavoured to destroy his intellect, or rather to prevent it from being developed, so as to detain him forever in a state of infantile imbecili ty. This supposed attempt at what they saw fit to denominate, the murder of the soul, gave rise to great discussions among the German Jurists ; and they soon raised it into a new crime, which they placed at the very head of social enormities. It is this very crime, tlte '111:ltrdcr of the soul, which is in the course of continuous and perpetual perpetration throughout the southern states of the American Union; and that not upon a single individual only, but upon nearly one half the entire population. Consider the slaves as men, and the course of treatment which custom and the laws prescribe, is an artful, deliberate, anu well-digested scheme to break their spirit; to deprive them of courage and of manhood; to destroy their natural desire for an equal participation in the benefits of society; to keep them ignorant, and therefore weak i to reduce them if possible to a state of idiocy; to crowd them down to a level with the brutes. A man, especially a civilized man, possessed of a certain portion of knowledge, and well skilled in some , art or science, is a mnch more valuable piece of property, and capable of prodncing for his master a far grcater.revenne, than a mere, two-legged human ani~ al , wnh all the failings and defCcts, and none of the Vutues of a savage. But if such a slave is more valuable, he is far more dangerous, ami far more dif- |