68 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
iarm in the human family ; and it is but a few weeks 
since the Legislature of Georgia passed a bill in the House 
of Representatives imposing pains and penalties, and cut- 
ting off the inheritance of issue, in case first cousins 
should be so vicious as to intermarry. It would show 
more sound sense to pass a law to hang all handsome 
ladies for witchcraft.' An error of this grave character 
must have some foundation ; let us see if we can find it, 
( To be Concluded.') 
THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 
Editors Southern Cultivator — As the African slave 
trade has been mooted in the Cultivator , I hope I can 
have my say without being suspected of a desire for con- 
troversy. So far from it, I now manifest my innocence of 
such intention, by protesting that I not only am not an- 
swering anything written, but hold myself not bound to 
answer any thing that may be said in reply, should any 
one honor this communicatins with a notice. For, I have 
had quite too hard a struggle^ with my indolence to put 
down what 1 have been, sometime, wishing to say on 
this matter, to take a position which might require the 
resumption of my pen. But knowing, if it be deferred too 
long, politicians may take up the question, when it will 
be too late to hope for impartial readers. It will then, be 
like summoning a jury in an exciting cause. They will 
all have formed and expressed an opinion, or rather, the 
demagogues will have expressed it for them, mattering 
fiot whether they have formed one or no, 
I wish toad.Iress the readers of the because 
they are, generally, slave holders, and interested in the 
preservation of slavery, for its merits, and unwilling to 
hazzard it as a foot ball for political gamesters, or avari- 
cious smugglers. For, when the evil spirit gets into this 
herd of swine, it would matter not if they should run vio- 
lently down a steep place into the sea and perish in the 
water, as fools and brutes should perish, were it not, that 
(hey may drag the country with them. 
The great difficulty in forming an opinion, in this 
country, on the subject of slavery is, that the champions, 
par excellence^ of the peculiar intitution, and who take lead 
in the mutter, do not reason from the sound data of what 
will, in the end, benefit it, but what is most offensive to 
the abolitionists. The antagonism has been so bitter, 
and of such long duration, and it has become so habitual 
to take the other side, that the presumption is whatever is 
offensive to them on this subject is right, and the more 
offensive, the more certainly right. And this mode of 
reasoning being very short and more convenient than the 
exercii-e of dispassionate losic that looks to cause and 
effect, it is adopted at once, with the relishing seasoning 
that it spites the abolitionists. If you appeal to such men 
for humane legislation for the slave, he will think it “ un- 
sound on the slavery question,” and vvhy I not because 
he is cruel, but because the abolitionists preach humanity 
for the slave, and therefore humanity is “ unsound.” 1 
recollect once, during great excitement on this subject, 
being present with an old friend at a public sale of slaves 
by an administrator. My friend was a large slave holder, 
and one of the peculiar guardians of the insiitution, and 
whose friendship I should have been afraid of losing, if I 
liad proposed legislation to prevent an abuse we witness- 
ed at the sale ; certainly been charged as not being “sound 
on the slavery question.” I am proud to say this abuse 
has since been corrected through the influence of a former 
Senator from this county. The administrator had put up a 
woman, mother of a large family of children, and sold 
her, and then put up the older children, and was coming 
regularly down the steps, too low for humanity, (the 
crowd, no doubt, being oppressed between the appeals of 
humanity and the fear of the suspicion of “ unsoundness”) 
when honest human nature parted the lips of one of the 
bystanders with the exclamation of shame ! shame! Then 
my old friend, whose heart was in the right place, though 
there was no place for logic in his head, was the loudest 
in condemnation of the abashed administrator. 
These champions may be just men, feeling the sacred- 
ness of good faith, and appreciating the rights of property 
and every other right except one; even magnanimouc 
and kind hearted. But there are a few scattered free ne- 
groes in our State who hold their freedom by as sacred a 
title as any of us hold our lands and slaves, given to them 
by kind and grateful masters, under the law, as valid as 
that which authorises the grants to our homes. And 
though you may trust the reverence of these “ sound 
men” for justice in every thing else, yet they would be 
willing to cheat these “ poor devills” indirectly, or rob 
them directly of their freedom. Not because they can 
show it to be just, or right, but it has the crown- 
ing recommendation of being offensive to the abolitionists, 
and proves the “ soundness” of the advocate on “ the 
slavery question.” It is immaterial to my argument 
whether the negro would be better off without his free- 
dom 1 for laying aside justice, many white men would be 
better off to deprive them of so useless an incumbrance 
as freedom. I only give these cases — as I could give a 
hundred others — to expose the folly, not to say wicked- 
ness, of the peculiarly “ sound men.” Some of them, I 
have no doubt, are the legitimate descendants of the old 
tory — not intimating they inherit the toryism — of whom 
Judge Crawford used to tell us : who being arrested in 
Columbia county, directly after the revolutionary war, 
was undergoin_g trial before Judge Lynch, and who plead, 
in his defence, that the war being ended, and the con- 
test over, it was then not only unjust but useless to shed 
blood, in mere wantonness and revenge. The whigs re- 
plied that so much blood having been shed during the 
war, the must have more blood in return. Why, replied 
the tory, triumphantly, at the happy idea of solving the 
difficulty that would save his life, why then not kill a 
negro, if blood is what you want, and then you can get 
as much as you wish. 
We read in the French revolution, how during the Sep- 
tember massacre, M. de Sombreuiel being about to be 
executed as an aristocrat, and his daughter clinging about 
his neck protesting he was not, was given the blood of 
aristocrats to drink, to prove her “ soundness” on the 
jacobin question; she drank, was pronounced “ sound” 
and for that time saved the life of her father. So, if our 
“ sound memon the slavery question” should take it into 
their heads that eating a “ nigger” would be peculiarly 
offensive to the abolitionists, we might expect, in addition 
to the oath that is required, to see at the balj^t box, a 
tray full of stewed “ nigger,” to be taken as a test of the 
“soundness” of voters i and like Sidney Smith’s cold 
missionary, to be taken without mustard or vinegar. 
When a candidate, to manifest that he is “dyed in the 
wool,” and ravenously “ sound” beyond dispute, to re- 
commend himself to the voters, will be s^en carrying 
about a shin bone, gnawing it as a relish; and will es- 
chew pig tail tobacco, substituting nigger heel for a cud 
in its stead. 
I have made these preliminary remarks, with the hope 
of inducing the leader to examine it, as any other ques- 
tion, upon its merits, and its merits alone, and should 
conclude them here, but, though I have not much rtspect 
for the old judge who tried the tory in Columbia ci unty, 
yet having a wholesome terror of rails, feather beds, tar 
barrels and such like horrid instruments of toriu.t , and 
having shown some of the weak points of the “ sound 
slavery men,” now to manifest my own “soundness,” I 
must allude to one of those of the “sound” anti-slavery 
men. As I am addressing slavery men, I take the one 
pertinent to my case, and hope I shall be excused from 
