An Englishman's Travels In America: His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States - 1857 - By J. Benwell.
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"Ah, Stranger," He Replied, "I See You Don't Understand Things Here,
Down South.
Don't you know that people who are over kind get imposed on?
This is specially the case with slaves; treat them well, and you'll soon
find them running off, or complaining.
The only way to manage niggers is
to keep them down, then you can control them, but not else."
It has been urged a thousand times in defence of the upholders of
slavery in its various ramifications, that they are in reality, as a
body, opposed to the system, and would readily conform to any change
that would be sufficiently comprehensive to indemnify them from present
and future loss. From conversations heard in South Carolina, and other
slave districts, I am quite satisfied that this is a misrepresentation,
and that the generality of proprietors regard any change as a dangerous
innovation, and that, far from reluctantly following the occupation of
traders in flesh and blood, it is quite congenial to the vitiated tastes
of the greater portion of southern citizens, whose perverted notions of
justice and propriety are clamorously expressed on the most trivial
occasions. In whatever sphere of society amongst them you go, you find
the subject of "protecting their rights" urged with impetuosity; the
same rancorous feeling towards men of abolitionist sentiments, and the
same deprecation of the slave race. To decry the negroes in public
opinion is one of their constant rules of action, and if an individual
attempts to assert their equal rights with mankind at large, he is
considered as disaffected towards southern interests, and, if not openly
threatened, as I have before observed in this work, is unceremoniously
talked down.' It is thus often dangerous to broach the subject, and if
an individual, more daring than people generally are when in the
plague-infected latitudes of slavery, attempts to repudiate the views so
unhesitatingly expressed by the pro-slavery advocates, that the negro
race is but the connecting link between man and the brute creation, he
is looked upon with disgust, and his society contemned.
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