The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive/Chapter 41
Two or three days after my arrival at Carleton Hall, Mr Mason and myself, who had become by this time excellent friends, rode to visit Poplar Grove. Of the old servant's quarter, the only building standing was one quite near the great house, a neat little cottage, which Mrs Montgomery had caused to be built on purpose for me and Cassy, and in which our vhild had been born. 'The honeysuckle which we had planted in commemoration of that event, and which she had twined with so much care over the door, was still growing there, though exhibiting many signs of age — old, bent, and gnarled, and the ends of the twigs beginning to die. The little garden around was still neatly kept, and I thought I recognized some of the very rose bushes which she and I had planted. Little did Mr Mason imagine my feelings as we rode together by that cottage door! O, how I longed to be alone and unobserved! It was, indeed, with the greatest difficulty that I prevented myself from springing from my saddle and rushing into the house. It seemed to me almost as if I should find Cassy there and the child! I learnt from conversation with Mr Mason, that the pecuniary results of his system of management were not less satisfactory than the moral ones. Owing to his father's good nature in indorsing the paper of a friend, the plantations, as he inherited them, had been burdened by a heavy mortgage, which was now nearly paid off. I did not fail to congratulate this worthy gentleman on having approached so near to the solution of a problem which all my observation and experience had made me believe insoluble — the making plantation life a tolerable condition of existence, as well for the slaves as for the free. But, though evidently well pleased with my compliments, Mr Mason shook his head. "I shan't deny, sir," he said, "that I feel a certain pleasure from the approval, by a man of your experience and discernment, of my poor efforts to do the best I can in the very trying and embarrassing position in which Providence has placed me; but, after all, sir, make the very best of it, this slavery is a damnable business for whites and blacks, and all of us together." Though we had talked before with a good deal of freedom, and though I had given Mr Mason an account of my experiences at Richmond with a pretty free expression of my own feelings and opinions, he had all along observed a certain uneasy reserve, as if doubting if it would be safe to speak out. Willing enough to draw him 'on, I replied, "Certainly, sir, if all masters were like you, slavery would be a very different thing from what it is, and vastly more tolerable." "Ay," said he, with a significant smile, "if all masters were like me, slavery would cease to exist to-morrow." "What," I asked, "are you an abolitionist?" I almost regretted the question the moment I had put it, for I at once perceived that even his sound head and heart were not entirely proof against a word so terrible to every southern ear — a sort of synonyme, in fact, for rape and throat-cutting. He began in a hesitating manner to disavow that character, but soon gave his answer a different turn. "No more an abolitionist," he said, "than Washington, or Patrick Henry. This is an evil, cursed system, beyond the reach of individual effort, and only to be remedied by public action. The worst evils, 1 am satisfied, that could possibly arise from setting all the slaves free to-morrow, would not begin to approach the amount of evil suffered, whether by blacks or whites, in every ten years that slavery continues to exist." "What," I asked, "would it be safe to set so many ignorant slaves free at once, and without any preparation for it? The general opinion among slaveholders seems to be that, if so freed, the slaves would begin by cutting the throats and taking possession of the wives and daughters of their masters, and end by dying of starvation for want of somebody to provide for them. You must begin, they say, by preparing them for freedom." "It is hardly worth while," answered Mr Mason, "to speculate upon a contingency so improbable, just now, as the setting free of all the slaves by the spontaneous act of their owners. A deal of preparation, I fear, will be wanting before we can come to that — preparation not so much, however, on the part of the slaves as on that of the masters. The slaves, in my opinion, are quite well enough prepared for freedom already; about as much so as slaves ever will be or can be. From my observations at home and abroad, they are decidedly more intelligent, and a good deal more kind-hearted and. manageable, than either the Trish or the English peasantry. The difficulty, and the only difficulty, about their working for wages, is precisely the same which has defeated two or three attempts that I have known to carry on plantations by free laborers imported from Europe. While we have so much more land than inhabitants, as we still do in most of the southern states, the negroes would prefer to scatter, and, instead of working for wages, to set up, like our present poorer class of free whites, each man a little plantation of his own. That is what has happened in Hayti. The sugar plantations which require the employment of numerous laborers have been in a great measure abandoned, while the coffee cultivation, which each cottager can carry on for himself, still flourishes, and forms the staple of the island."
"Tf that is all," I answered, "the slaves themselves would not seem to be in any great danger of starving, however it might be with some of their late masters. But pray, sir, what do you think of the throat-cutting, and other enormities?" "These," he replied, "are bugbears inherited from our grandmothers. The wild savages, many of them prisoners of war, formerly imported from Africa, when they rose in insurrection, as they sometimes did, naturally enough began, if they could, by cutting their masters' throats. An insurrection, even nowadays, as it is sure to be met by bullets, bowie knives, hangings and burnings, is likely enough, while it lasts, to be prosecuted by the same methods. The negro is an imitative creature, and easily adopts the example which his master sets. But to suppose that our slaves, if voluntarily set free, would take to robbing and murdering their white neighbors, instead of bestirring themselves like other poor folks — like the Irish emigrants, for instance, landed on our shores in no respect their superiors, except in freedom — to earn an honest living by their labor, for themselves and their children, seems to me quite ridiculous. It is paying a very poor compliment, indeed, to the courage and superiority of us whites, to doubt whether we, superior as well in numbers as in every thing else, could not inspire awe enough to maintain our natural position at the head of the community, and to keep these poor people in order without making slaves of them."
"But suppose," said I, "the emancipated slaves should prove as harmless as you imagine. Suppose they should actually labor enough to save themselves from starvation; yet, scattered upon little patches of ground, would they not live in idleness and poverty, leaving the present productive plantations abandoned, and reducing the whole south to a squalid misery, such as we see in the present villages of free blacks?"
"The present free colored people in the United States," said Mr Mason, "are a poor, persecuted race; placed, especially in the southern states, under very anomalous circumstances; and yet, even among them, I have known some very deserving persons. It would, however, be more reasonable to deduce the position which our supposed emancipated slaves would be likely to assume, from that at present occupied by the mass of our white people who do not own slaves. I must confess, there is not much to boast of in the condition of the poor white people throughout the southern states. It is freedom which makes the chief difference between the slaves and those poor whites. Here in North Carolina, a very great number of them can neither read nor write, nor tell their own age; nor are they, in any intellectual or moral respect, (except that consciousness of being their own masters which goes so far towards making a man,) superior to the generality of the plantation slaves. Yet however there may be some, among our rich planters, who would think it a very good thing to reduce these poor white men to slavery, he would be a bold fellow, indeed, who would dare to propose, much more to undertake it. That, indeed, would seem scarcely necessary, for already the operation of our system is terribly depressing to them, as well as to the slaves. It hangs like a millstone about their necks, since it makes almost every kind of manual labor disgraceful; and apart from manual labor, how few other chances have the poor to acquire that capital necessary to give them a start in the world! And yet, with all these drawbacks and impediments, it is still this class of the poor free whites which forms the substratum and_ basis of our southern civilization, such as it is. My father began life a poor man. He has often told me that he came the first time to Carleton Hall barefooted, not being, in fact, the owner of a pair of shoes. The fathers or grandfathers of almost all my neighbors were poor men also. It is a common saying that a plantation seldom remains in the same family beyond the third generation. It is out of this class of the poor that the new proprietors spring up; and it is into this class of the poor that the families of the former proprietors subside. But consider how this class of the poor is sunk, deteriorated, and weighed down by slavery! No wonder that in wealth, industry, intelligence, every thing that makes a community respectable, we are so far behind the free states. Not only have our poor free people vastly less chance to rise than the people of the same class at the north, but by holding the bulk of our laborers in perpetual slavery, we cut off the very main source whence fresh energy and strength ought to flow in upon us. Here, in my opinion, is the great evil which this system inflicts upon the community, as well as the greatest wrong which it inflicts on the individuals. It is very easy to say, that compare my slaves with as many families of poor white people within a range of ten miles about, and they are better fed, better clothed, better lodged, and vastly freer from care and anxiety. That is true; but there goes a man, now — Ah, Peter, how'dy, my good fellow?" — such were the words with which Mr Mason nodded to an immense brawny black man, who passed us just at this moment, driving a cart, — "there goes a man, now, who, if he was his own master, and in a country where his color did not deprive him of equal rights, -would, before he died, have a plantation of his own, and one worth owning, too. That fellow has a head; his opinion upon any question of cultivation, or upon any application of plantation labor, is worth more, any day, than mine and that of my two overseers put together. And do you suppose that slavery under any form can agree with such a man as that? There is a considerable class who seem to be born to be the mere instruments of others; and if only such persons were born slaves, it might not be of so much consequence." "But among those born in servitude there are all sorts of characters. Why, Mr Mason, it might have happened to me or to you to be born a slave. ‘There are slaves here in North Carolina quite as white as either of us; and do you suppose that under any circumstances we should have rested content under such a fate? We might have submitted, rather than jump out of the ‘frying-pan into the fire, and-yet have found the frying-pan not by any means our natural element."