26 



COLOR THE MEASURE OF RANK. 



a negro. Few will need to be told that where such is the 

 condition of public sentiment in a class, the standard of 

 female virtue among them cannot be very high. It is, 

 perhaps, a trifle higher than among the slaves.* 



It is their ambition that their offspring should be light 

 complexioned, and there are few sacrifices they will not 

 make to accomplish that result, whether married or not. 

 Color with them, in a measure, marks rank, and they have 



* Lest I should be supposed from these remarks, to countenance an opinion 

 quite popular in some quarters, that licentiousness is an inherent vice in the negro 

 character, I may as well state, that the training received by the black population 

 during the prevalence of slavery, is more than sufficient to account for any kind of 

 intimacy between the sexes which is found to exist here, unless, perhaps, it should 

 be one of a virtuous character. The masters would rarely permit, and almost 

 uniformly discouraged matrimony among the slaves, for reasons sufficiently obvi- 

 ous to those who can bring themselves to look for a moment upon human bond- 

 men in an exclusively financial point of view. The same selfishness tended to 

 discourage matrimony among the overseers and agents, and often the loss of their 

 situation was the penalty which they paid for presuming to rear children for their 

 own honor rather than of slaves for the profit of their employers. In a recent 

 sketch of a trip to Jamaica, made by the Rev. Dr. King, I found some facts stated 

 as coming within his observation which confirmed what I have said. He says : — 



" A missionary, in whose word I can thoroughly confide, informed me that four 

 negroes, who had attended for some time on his instructions, intimated to him their 

 earnest desire to marry the women with whom they were living in concubinage, 

 and expressed to him their hope that he would intercede for them with their mas- 

 ters to have the measure sanctioned. He wrote a respectful letter to the proper 

 authorities, soliciting their acquiescence, and despatched it to its destination on a 

 Saturday forenoon. No notice of the communication was taken till Monday, when 

 the four negroes were called out, stripped, and lashed, and then told to show their 

 bleeding backs to their parson, and acquaint him that this was the answer to his 

 letter ! The prohibition against marriage extended to whites as well as to blacks. 

 A book-keeper or overseer perilled his situation by marrying without the consent 

 of the attorney or proprietor ; and usually it was vain to solicit any such concur- 

 rence. To the present day difficulties are occasionally interposed by the same 

 parties to the formation of the nuptial union ; and I was requested, in one case, to 

 use my influence in obviating this kind of opposition. An attorney agreed to 

 wave further resistance to his book-keeper's wedding, on the whimsical condition 

 that I should accomplish a considerable journey to perform the marriage ceremony. 

 When such was the state of the whole colony, when fornication and adultery 

 were everywhere practised by the lords of the soil, and the imperious agents of 

 their pleasure, who could expect the seventh commandment to be regarded by 

 the negro, or what could be looked for from systematic and penal suppression of 

 its observance but the desertion of females, the neglect of progeny, and the 

 general dissolution of morals by which Jamaica is now afflicted]" 



