Mason And Dixon's Line, Of Which We
Hear So Often, And Which Was First Established As The Division
Between Slave Soil And Free Soil, Runs Between Pennsylvania And
Maryland.
The little State of Delaware, which lies between
Maryland and the Atlantic, is also tainted with slavery, but the
stain is not heavy nor indelible.
In a population of a hundred and
twelve thousand, there are not two thousand slaves, and of these
the owners generally would willingly rid themselves if they could.
It is, however, a point of honor with these owners, as it is also
in Maryland, not to sell their slaves; and a man who cannot sell
his slaves must keep them. Were he to enfranchise them and send
them about their business, they would come back upon his hands.
Were he to enfranchise them and pay them wages for work, they would
get the wages, but he would not get the work. They would get the
wages; but at the end of three months they would still fall back
upon his hands in debt and distress, looking to him for aid and
comfort as a child looks for it. It is not easy to get rid of a
slave in a slave State. That question of enfranchising slaves is
not one to be very readily solved.
In Pennsylvania the right of voting is confined to free white men.
In New York the colored free men have the right to vote, providing
they have a certain small property qualification, and have been
citizens for three years in the State, whereas a white man need
have been a citizen but for ten days, and need have no property
qualification - from which it is seen that the position of the negro
becomes worse, or less like that of a white man, as the border of
slave land is more nearly reached. But, in the teeth of this
embargo on colored men, the constitution of Pennsylvania asserts
broadly that all men are born equally free and independent. One
cannot conceive how two clauses can have found their way into the
same document so absolutely contradictory to each other. The first
clause says that white men shall vote, and that black men shall
not - which means that all political action shall be confined to
white men. The second clause says that all men are born equally
free and independent.
In Philadelphia I for the first time came across live
secessionists - secessionists who pronounced themselves to be such.
I will not say that I had met in other cities men who falsely
declared themselves true to the Union; but I had fancied, in regard
to some, that their words were a little stronger than their
feelings. When a man's bread - and, much more, when the bread of
his wife and children - depends on his professing a certain line of
political conviction, it is very hard for him to deny his assent to
the truth of the argument. One feels that a man, under such
circumstances, is bound to be convinced, unless he be in a position
which may make a stanch adherence to opposite politics a matter of
grave public importance. In the North I had fancied that I could
sometimes read a secessionist tendency under a cloud of Unionist
protestations. But in Philadelphia men did not seem to think it
necessary to have recourse to such a cloud. I generally found, in
mixed society, that even there the discussion of secession was not
permitted; but in society that was not mixed I heard very strong
opinions expressed on each side. With the Unionists nothing was so
strong as the necessity of keeping of Slidell and Mason; when I
suggested that the English government would probably require their
surrender, I was talked down and ridiculed. "Never that - come what
may." Then, within half an hour, I would be told by a secessionist
that England must demand reparation if she meant to retain any
place among the great nations of the world; but he also would
declare that the men would not be surrendered. "She must make the
demand," the secessionists would say, "and then there will be war;
and after that we shall see whose ports will be blockaded!" The
Southerner has ever looked to England for some breach of the
blockade quite as strongly as the North has looked to England for
sympathy and aid in keeping it.
The railway from Philadelphia to Baltimore passes along the top of
Chesapeake Bay and across the Susquehanna River; at least the
railway cars do so. On one side of that river they are run on to a
huge ferry-boat, and are again run off at the other side. Such an
operation would seem to be one of difficulty to us under any
circumstances; but as the Susquehanna is a tidal river, rising and
falling a considerable number of feet, the natural impediment in
the way of such an enterprise would, I think, have staggered us.
We should have built a bridge costing two or three millions
sterling, on which no conceivable amount of traffic would pay a
fair dividend. Here, in crossing the Susquehanna, the boat is so
constructed that its deck shall be level with the line of the
railway at half tide, so that the inclined plane from the shore
down to the boat, or from the shore up to the boat, shall never
exceed half the amount of the rise or fall. One would suppose that
the most intricate machinery would have been necessary for such an
arrangement; but it was all rough and simple, and apparently
managed by two negroes. We would employ a small corps of engineers
to conduct such an operation, and men and women would be detained
in their carriages under all manner of threats as to the peril of
life and limb; but here everybody was expected to look out for
himself. The cars were dragged up the inclined plane by a hawser
attached to an engine, which hawser, had the stress broken it, as I
could not but fancy probable, would have flown back and cut to
pieces a lot of us who were standing in front of the car.
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