ii2 The Winning of the West 



especially upon those members of the dominant 

 caste who do not themselves own slaves. Moreover, 

 the negro, unlike so many of the inferior races, does 

 not dwindle away in the presence of the white man. 

 He holds his own; indeed, under the conditions of 

 American slavery he increased faster than the white, 

 threatening to supplant him. He actually has sup 

 planted him in certain of the West Indian Islands, 

 where the sin of the white in enslaving the black 

 has been visited upon the head of the wrongdoer 

 by his victim with a dramatically terrible complete 

 ness of revenge. 



What has occurred in Hayti is what would even 

 tually have occurred in our own semi-tropical States 

 if the slave-trade and slavery had continued to flour 

 ish as their short-sighted advocates wished. Slavery 

 is ethically abhorrent to all right-minded men; and 

 it is to be condemned without stint on this ground 

 alone. From the standpoint of the master caste it 

 is to be condemned even more strongly because it 

 invariably in the end threatens the very existence 

 of that master caste. From this point of view the 

 presence of the negro is the real problem; slavery 

 is merely the worst possible method of solving the 

 problem. In their earlier stages the problem and 

 its solution, in America, were one. There may be 

 differences of opinion as to how to solve the prob 

 lem ; but there can be none whatever as to the evil 

 wrought by those who brought about that problem ; 

 and it was only the slave-holders and the slave- 

 traders who were guilty on this last count. The 



