The Whig standard. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1843-1844, 1844-01-02
THE SLAVE QUESTION.


THE SLAVE QUESTION.
From very sensible and truthful communica-
ton in the National Intelligencer of Saturday,
signed by Samuel M. Semmes, of Cumberland,
Md, we make the following extract. We only
make the extract because our space will not per-
is the following:
1t is a mistaken notion to suppose that the
Southern master or STAKEHOLDER has no sympa-
thies with his bondmen. If the negro has true
friend upon earth it is a kind master. Looking
up as negroes do to their masters, priding them
selves upon the livery they wear, and manifesting
as they often do the most afectionate interest in
their masters affairs, it is notorious that masters
in return alnsst invariably cherish for their slaves
sort of paternal feelng-that they regard and
watch over their negroes not merely as slaves
held for convenience and profit but as human
beings having souls to be saved, and for whose
treatment and teaching here below we shall have
y to render an account to that Divine Master over
us ALL who will recognise no distinctions of color
in that eternal world whittier we are all hasten
ing.
That slavery is an evil, is felt to be such by
the Southern stakeholder; for except in climates
where African slave labor alone can be used,
will undertake to say that the employment of free
white labor is much more profitable. In my own
case am satisfied that should save money bv
it, were l to liberate all my negroes uncondtion-
ally and employ white servants for the future
See what contrast the fields and improvements
of a free State present to those of slave State
Does Southern family, with its thousand acres
and hundred slaves, ever add to it's capital! Sell
dom, If ever. Trace this family into the second
and third generation, and what will you see
The old mansion halls are more than likely ten
I<oI 49, h. &c -
and the sons who were raised with such high
expectations, if they received any inheritance
from their fathers, have squandered it, and are
now in poverty and want. This, this is the vice
of domestic slavery. Children, from being used
to slaves, regard labor as degrading, and grow up
in ideness. ldleness begets dissipation, and dis
sipation ruin"
Every man who has resided for any length of
time in either of the slave States, if he have a
grain of candor, will at once assent to the truth
of these two paragraphs to which we call the
attention of the Northern and Southern men,
We have seen the black man in every condition
in which he finds himself as well in bondage as
enjoying freedom; we have seen him under hard
masters and under kind ones and we have seen
him master of himself; and we freely and hon.
estly declare, that setting aside the enjoyment of
freedom, we would, if compelled to take our
choice of one condition or the other, and our
chance for happiness in the one or the other,
greatly prefer that of the negro in bondage, as
we have seen that bondage, to that of the negro
enjoying freedom, as we have seen him enjoying
it. The free blacks of the Northern cities are
neither as well clothed, as well fed, nor as we'll
cared for, physically and morally, as the slaves of
the South, take them as body and he who
urges the immediate abolition of slavery we con-
slider the greatest enemy the negro has
But while we say this to the people Of the
North, we would urge upon those of the South
to consider well the truths stated by Mr. Semmes
in the second paragraph of the above extract. We
believe it to be the interest of the South, gradu
ally, by slow process, to get rid of their slaves
and slavery of course. Had not those who have
more zeal than knowledge, intermeddled with
this subject, we are decidedly of opinion that
Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee,
and, perhaps, North Carolina, would ere now
have adopted plans gradually to abolish slavery
within their respective borders, and that the con.
dition of the blacks would, in those as well as all
the other States where slavery exists, have been |
greatly ameliorated The interference of the
Aboltionists has retarded emancipation in all the