第97章
"When father died, he left the whole property to us twin boys, to be divided as we should agree. There does not breathe on God's earth a nobler-souled, more generous fellow, than Alfred, in all that concerns his equals; and we got on admirably with this property question, without a single unbrotherly word or feeling.
We undertook to work the plantation together; and Alfred, whose outward life and capabilities had double the strength of mine, became an enthusiastic planter, and a wonderfully successful one.
"But two years' trial satisfied me that I could not be a partner in that matter. To have a great gang of seven hundred, whom I could not know personally, or feel any individual interest in, bought and driven, housed, fed, worked like so many horned cattle, strained up to military precision,--the question of how little of life's commonest enjoyments would keep them in working order being a constantly recurring problem,--the necessity of drivers and overseers,--the ever-necessary whip, first, last, and only argument,--the whole thing was insufferably disgusting and loathsome to me; and when I thought of my mothcr's estimate of one poor human soul, it became even frightful!
"It's all nonsense to talk to me about slaves _enjoying_ all this! To this day, I have no patience with the unutterable trash that some of your patronizing Northerners have made up, as in their zeal to apologize for our sins. We all know better. Tell me that any man living wants to work all his days, from day-dawn till dark, under the constant eye of a master, without the power of putting forth one irresponsible volition, on the same dreary, monotonous, unchanging toil, and all for two pairs of pantaloons and a pair of shoes a year, with enough food and shelter to keep him in working order! Any man who thinks that human beings can, as a general thing, be made about as comfortable that way as any other, I wish he might try it. I'd buy the dog, and work him, with a clear conscience!"
"I always have supposed," said Miss Ophelia, "that you, all of you, approved of these things, and thought them _right_--according to Scripture."
"Humbug! We are not quite reduced to that yet. Alfred who is as determined a despot as ever walked, does not pretend to this kind of defence;--no, he stands, high and haughty, on that good old respectable ground, _the right of the strongest_; and he says, and I think quite sensibly, that the American planter is `only doing, in another form, what the English aristocracy and capitalists are doing by the lower classes;' that is, I take it, _appropriating_ them, body and bone, soul and spirit, to their use and convenience.
He defends both,--and I think, at least, _consistently_. He says that there can be no high civilization without enslavement of the masses, either nominal or real. There must, he says, be a lower class, given up to physical toil and confined to an animal nature; and a higher one thereby acquires leisure and wealth for a more expanded intelligence and improvement, and becomes the directing soul of the lower. So he reasons, because, as I said, he is born an aristocrat;--so I don't believe, because I was born a democrat."
"How in the world can the two things be compared?" said Miss Ophelia. "The English laborer is not sold, traded, parted from his family, whipped."
"He is as much at the will of his employer as if he were sold to him. The slave-owner can whip his refractory slave to death,--the capitalist can starve him to death. As to family security, it is hard to say which is the worst,--to have one's children sold, or see them starve to death at home."
"But it's no kind of apology for slavery, to prove that it isn't worse than some other bad thing."
"I didn't give it for one,--nay, I'll say, besides, that ours is the more bold and palpable infringement of human rights; actually buying a man up, like a horse,--looking at his teeth, cracking his joints, and trying his paces and then paying down for him,--having speculators, breeders, traders, and brokers in human bodies and souls,--sets the thing before the eyes of the civilized world in a more tangible form, though the thing done be, after all, in its nature, the same; that is, appropriating one set of human beings to the use and improvement of another without any regard to their own."
"I never thought of the matter in this light," said Miss Ophelia.
"Well, I've travelled in England some, and I've looked over a good many documents as to the state of their lower classes; and I really think there is no denying Alfred, when he says that his slaves are better off than a large class of the population of England. You see, you must not infer, from what I have told you, that Alfred is what is called a hard master; for he isn't. He is despotic, and unmerciful to insubordination; he would shoot a fellow down with as little remorse as he would shoot a buck, if he opposed him. But, in general, he takes a sort of pride in having his slaves comfortably fed and accommodated.
"When I was with him, I insisted that he should do something for their instruction; and, to please me, he did get a chaplain, and used to have them catechized Sunday, though, I believe, in his heart, that he thought it would do about as much good to set a chaplain over his dogs and horses. And the fact is, that a mind stupefied and animalized by every bad influence from the hour of birth, spending the whole of every week-day in unreflecting toil, cannot be done much with by a few hours on Sunday. The teachers of Sunday-schools among the manufacturing population of England, and among plantation-hands in our country, could perhaps testify to the same result, _there and here_. Yet some striking exceptions there are among us, from the fact that the negro is naturally more impressible to religious sentiment than the white."
"Well," said Miss Ophelia, "how came you to give up your plantation life?"