Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1857-02-20
From the Richmond, Va, Examiner.
The Free Negro Population.

q slaveholding community. With few
merltorious exceptions, they are idle,
vagabond Incorporate, dishonest, indo
lent. They belong exclusively to the
class of consumers, and hang as a dead
weight upon the body polite. They are
not only heavy charge upon the public
economy in this manner. but, free in the
presence of the slave, idle by the side of
the involuntary laborer, having liberty
of egress and ingress among popula-
ton itself denied free loeomotion, they at
once excite discomfort by their example,
infamc the spirit of INSTRUMENTATION by |
their conversation, and present them
selves as the ready Instruments of cor
respondents between plantations and of
general organization whenever the spirit
of discomfort and INSTRUMENTATION are
ripe for open rebellion among the slaves.
Non-freeholders, they are unfit for
employment in agriculture; and if enga-
ging in the mechanical trades and the
higher departments ofmanual labor, they
justly offend the self-rcspect of the i'm
portant class of whites laboring in those
pursuits. The law does not prohibit
them from acquiring land, and yet, by a
sort Unnatural destiny, they seem inca
pable of becoming owners of the soil
barring very few exceptions which
prove the general rule. There is no in
stance, in our knowledge of the free ne
gro population, Of successful free ne
gro tiller of the soil. T. accident places
him in possession Of land, it gradually
dwindles under his tenure into the weed
grown patch, which has been the curtil-
lage of the negro in two continents, and
for as many centuries 1t has been no
more ordained for the African without
master, to till the soil, than for the wild
Arab or the Aboriginal Indian. And
hence, nothing can be more anomalous,
economically, than the free African III
an agricultural community. ant
He is as unfit for the mechanic arts as
for agriculture wanting the power of
combination, of accuracy in measurement
and calculation, of mental concentra-
ton and of physical application, which
are the essentials in mechanism. Our
whole experience of him in the trades
has never produced a single instance of
a master workman; his highest success
in this department of industry, showing
him nothing more than tolerable jot-
Der, or respectable botch. Besides, as
we have said, to encourage him in the
trades, is to wound the scif-tcspect ofoneI
of the most sterling and respectable
classes Of our white population, and to
drive all of these, but such as are with
out manly pride of character and oceu-
patton, from our community, Hence,
nothing could be a greater anomaly in
the economy of community made up in
part of citizen mechanics, than a popu-
lation Of free negroes employed in the
mechanical trades. m
The free negro, therefore, must needs
live vagabond life in the rural districts,
performing occasionally the mental Of
fees for the whites for which the slaves
are abundantly adequate or collect about
the towns and villages to perform those
Offices Of mental urban service to which |
the slaves are not adapted-and Of pros
titntion which pay the highest Temporal
ry emolunlent and entail the deepest and
most enduring degradation. Thus, too,
it is that.in performing these mental and
infamous Offices, the free negro presents
an ugly economical anomaly putrid,
uoisome sore upon thcface ofour society,
The truth is established in the con-
victon Of every intelligent human being,
that the African race, except as slaves
acting by compulsion of higher will,
cannot sustain itself as constituent cle-
ment of civilization, and when indiydu-
ally released from bondage and set free
upon civilization, hangs as dead weight
and fastens as gangrene sore upon the
general system. u WfT W
The condition of the free negro popu-
lation itself calls for change in its So
cial state, no less urgently than the gene
raj good of the white aud slave popula-
ton demands some radical measure look
ing to the extinction Of the class in our
midst. And thus, the only problem for
solution is, how shall our social system
be rid Of this population. Plainly, there
are but two modes of clfecting TIC rid
dance those Of sending all Of them off
who shall elect to go--dnd selling those
uto remain, again into tie condition Of
bondage. 'i1ad
70 require the free negro to 20 North
is only to require that Of him which the
North encourages bis brotherand neigh
Dor among the slaves to 90. The North
are not injurcdby bis emigration thither,
as they themselves testify, by enticing
our slaves into the same step. The free
negro goes from a community in which
he is felt aud feels himself to boa q
nuisance, and which labors necessarily to
spew him forth, to community which
Welcomes bis race With open arms, and
seems to worship the color Of his skin
and the curl Of his hair.
II he refuses TO emigrate to the more
hospitablc North, then there is no other
left under the reasoning in /
the premises bus 10 sell the FREQ negro
into slavery. The Commonwealth has
already asserted. Der right TO sell him in
TO bondage By autliorising his sale for
goal fees and other debts to herself. |
The principle has thus been long ago as
serted and acted upon, 50 that il is only /
the eepediency Of tho measure which Is
left 10 be determined There arc S. |
600 free negroes in the State. dc salc
cfaotnt r1aid p2aig>s % Ne psHi-