This Reward, Simple And Natural As One
Would Conceive It, Would Border On Humanity; And Planters Must Have
None Of It!
If negroes are permitted to become fathers, this fatal indulgence
only tends to increase their misery:
The poor companions of their
scanty pleasures are likewise the companions of their labours; and
when at some critical seasons they could wish to see them relieved,
with tears in their eyes they behold them perhaps doubly oppressed,
obliged to bear the burden of nature - a fatal present - as well as
that of unabated tasks. How many have I seen cursing the
irresistible propensity, and regretting, that by having tasted of
those harmless joys, they had become the authors of double misery to
their wives. Like their masters, they are not permitted to partake
of those ineffable sensations with which nature inspires the hearts
of fathers and mothers; they must repel them all, and become callous
and passive. This unnatural state often occasions the most acute,
the most pungent of their afflictions; they have no time, like us,
tenderly to rear their helpless off-spring, to nurse them on their
knees, to enjoy the delight of being parents. Their paternal
fondness is embittered by considering, that if their children live,
they must live to be slaves like themselves; no time is allowed them
to exercise their pious office, the mothers must fasten them on
their backs, and, with this double load, follow their husbands in
the fields, where they too often hear no other sound than that of
the voice or whip of the taskmaster, and the cries of their infants,
broiling in the sun.
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