In
the Cotton States the whites and the negroes are nearly equal in
numbers; and if, in Jamaica, Barbadoes, Santa Cruz, and Martinique, the
slaves, when liberated, have respected the rights of the masters, and
recognized their title to the land, and have submitted to toil for
moderate wages, where a handful of whites monopolized the soil, and
demanded for it prices far beyond the value of the slave and land
together, may we not well anticipate that the slave population, barely
equal in number to the white population, trained to submission in a
region where land is of little value, will, if liberated, continue to be
a quiet and peaceful population?
There are some who predict that the negroes, if emancipated, will
overrun the North and West. But why should they fly from the South to
the cold winters and less genial climate of the North or West? It is
servitude which degrades the negro; and if the stigma which he now bears
is removed, why should he not cling to the region in which he was born
and bred, and to which he is adapted by nature?
Should the institution of slavery survive the war into which we have
been plunged by its adherents and propagators, we might well fear that
our Northern and Western States would be overrun by the fugitives, who,
having escaped during the war, would be disposed to place distance
between themselves and their late masters, and to fly from the borders
of States which would not hesitate to reduce them again to servitude;
but if the institution itself should be terminated by the war, why
should the free man be a fugitive from his home?
Our Western States are desirous to perpetuate in its purity the
Anglo-Saxon blood, and would colonize the West with men raised under
free institutions.
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