CHAP. XXV.] EFFECTS OF IMMEDIATE EMANCIPATION. 83 



power given to them by an exclusive franchise, to pass disabling 1 

 statutes against the blacks, to prevent them from engaging in 

 certain kinds of work. In several states, Virginia among others, 

 I heard of strikes, where the white workmen bound themselves 

 not to return to their employment until the master had discharged 

 all his colored people. Such combinations will, no doubt, forward 

 the substitution of white for negro labor, and may hasten the era 

 of general emancipation. But if this measure be prematurely 

 adopted, the negroes are a doomed race, and already their situa 

 tion is most critical. I found a deep conviction prevailing in the 

 minds of experienced slave-owners, of the injury which threatened 

 them ; and, more than once, in Kentucky and elsewhere, in an 

 swer to my suggestions, that the time for introducing free labor 

 had come, they said, &quot; I think so ; we must get rid of the negroes.&quot; 

 &quot;Do you not think,&quot; said I, &quot;if you could send them all away, 

 that some parts of the country would be depopulated, seeing how 

 unhealthy the low grounds are for the whites ?&quot; &quot; Perhaps so,&quot; 

 replied one planter, &quot; but other regions would become more pro 

 ductive by way of compensation ; the insalubrity of the Pontine 

 marshes would be no excuse for negro slavery in Italy. All might 

 end well,&quot; he added, &quot;were it not that so many anti-slavery men 

 in the north are as precipitate and impatient as if they believed, 

 like the Milleritcs, that the world was coming to an end.&quot; 



One of the most reasonable advocates of immediate emancipa 

 tion whom I met with in the north, said to rne, &quot; You are like 

 many of our politicians, who can look on one side only of a great 

 question. Grant the possibility of these three millions of colored 

 people, or even twelve millions of them fifty years hence, being 

 capable of amalgamating with the whites, such a result might be 

 to you perhaps, as a philanthropist or physiologist, a very inter 

 esting experiment ; but would not the progress of the whites be 

 retarded, and our race deteriorated, nearly in the same proportion 

 as the negroes would gain ? Why not consider the interests of the 

 white race by hastening the abolition of slavery. The whites con 

 stitute nearly six-sevenths of our whole population. As a philan 

 thropist, you arc bound to look to the greatest good of the two races 

 collectively, or the advantage of the whole population of the Union.&quot; 



