CHAP. XXV.] SLAVERY IN SOUTHERN STATES. 79 



ably.&quot; He gives a detailed account of his adventures in the re 

 gions which I traversed in Alabama, Georgia, and many other 

 states, and concludes by observing, &quot; After witnessing negro 

 slavery in mostly all the slaveholding states, having lived for 

 weeks in cotton plantations, observing closely the actual condition 

 of the negroes, I can assert, without fear of contradiction from 

 any man who has any knowledge of the subject, that I have 

 never witnessed one-fifth of the real suffering that I have seen in 

 manufacturing establishments in Great Britain.&quot; In reference to 

 another topic, he affirms &quot; that the members of the same family 

 of negroes are not so much scattered as are those of working men 

 in Scotland, whose necessities compel them to separate at an age 

 when the American slave is running about gathering health and 

 strength.&quot;-* 



I am aware that there is some danger, when one hears the 

 philanthropist declaiming in terms of gross exaggeration on the 

 horrors of slavery and the crimes of the planters, of being tempted 

 by a spirit of contradiction, or rather by a love of justice, to coun 

 teract misrepresentation, by taking too favorable a view of the 

 condition and prospects of the negroes. But there is another 

 reason, also, which causes the traveler in the south to moderate 

 his enthusiasm for emancipation. He is forced continually to 

 think of the responsibility which would be incurred, if several 

 millions of human beings were hastily set aside, like so many ma 

 chines, by withdrawing from them suddenly the protection afford 

 ed by their present monopoly of labor. In the opening of the 

 market freely to white competitors, before the race is more im 

 proved, consists their danger. 



Yet, on taking a near view of the slave question, we are often 

 thrown into opposite states of mind and feeling, according as the 

 interests of the white or negro race happen, for the moment, to 

 claim our sympathy. It is useless now to look back and wish, 

 for the sake of civilization, that no Africans had ever crossed the 

 Atlantic. Their number in the Union now exceeds three mill 

 ions, and, as they have doubled in the last twenty-five years, we 



* Tradesman s Travels in the United States, &c., in the years 1840-42, 

 p. 182. 



