Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1861-06-19


The slave owners of South Carolina and
Virginia claim superiority over the north be-
cause their colonial ancestors were gentle
men, while the settlers of New En- land and
the north were the common sort of folks. We
propose to examine in the light of history this
pretension of superiority. In Sir Josiah
Child's discourse concerning Plantations"
published in 1892, paper well known to his
torical students. aud of high authenticity, the
following passage occurs -
"To.resolve this Question we must consider
what kind of people they were, and are that
have and do transport themselves to our for.
eign plantations New England las every one
knows,) was originally inhabited, AMI hath
since successfully been replenished by 4 sort
OF people called PuritaRS, which could not con
form to the ecclesiastical laws of England but
being wearied with church ceNsurcS and per-
seculnns, were forced to quit their fathers
land, 10 ind out new habitatons, as many Of
them did in Germany and Holland, us well as
New Eueiaud; and had there not been New
England iourd for some of them, Germany
and Holland probably had received the rest !;
but old England TO be sure had lost them all.
Virginia and Barbadoes were first peopled
by Sort OF loose vagrnt People, vicious and
destitute OF Means to live at Home lbeing
either unfit for Iabour, or such as could find
none to employ themselves about, on had so
misbehav'd themselves by, Thieving, or
other Debauchery, that none would set them
on work. which Merchants and Masters of
Ships by their Agents Tor Spirits as they were
calld) gather'd up about the Streets OF Lon
don and ether Places, cluathd and transport.
ed to be employed upon Plantations and
these, l say, were such as, had there been no
English Foreign Plantation in the World
could probably never have liv'tl ut Home to
do Service for their Country but must have
come to be hang'd or starv'd, or died untime-
ly of some Of those miserable Diseases that
proceed from Want and Vice; or else have
sold themselves for Soldiers. to he knocked
on the head, or starved, in the Qunrrels OF
our Neighbors, as many Thousands of brave
Engishmen were in the low Countries, as
also in the Wars OF Germany, France and
Sweden, Sc, or else if they could by begging,
or otherwise, arrive to the Stock of half a
Crown to wait them over to Holland, become
Servants to the Dutch, who refuse none"
These are the gentlemen, the men of
blood, of family, who settled eastern Virginia
ard whose descendants cannot without degra.
dation associate with those OF the Winthrops,
the HaucockS, the Broadstreets, the LinColns,
the Standishes, the Prtscotts, the WantOns,
the Huchinsons, of New England. These
were tie fathers of the whisky drinking, to.
hacco.Chewing aristocracy, whose desire, Mr..
Russell informs us, and no doubt truly, is to
have cone of the royal race of England TO
rule over" them But these were BY no means
the worst OF the immigrants to Virginia.
These only ran away Others were sent away.
The following is from Hildreth's History of
the United States
"Durng the year that Sandys held office,
he sent to Virginia twelve hundred emigrants,
twice as many as there were inhabitants when
he became treasurer. Among them were 80
young women, pure and uncorrupt, who were
disposed OF for the cost OF their passage, as
wives to the planters. The price Of wife
was hundred pounds OF tobacco worth then
about seventy five dollars. But Ealf as much
more was obtained for those Of second cargo
sent out year or two after There were 9th
er emigrants OF sort less desirable By the
kings special Order an hundred absolute yag-
abOnds, the swecpings of the prisons, Familiarity
known among the colonsts az 'jailbrds,
were sent to Virginia to be sold as servants,---
a practice long continued as regular item of
British criminal jurisprud- nee, in spite of the
repeated complaints OF the colonsts, aud their
efforts to prevent it."
x
There is one plain reason why the southern
men of gentle manners and Of courteous breed
ing-and there are many such--make so
marked and favorable an impression. a south.
ern gentlemen, born TO fortune educated at
Yale or Harvard, accustomed all his life to lib
eral pursuits and honorable employments, pre-
SCENTS great contrasts TO a specimen of what
they call the poor white" and the negroes
call 'white ash" born to ignorance, unable
TO read or write, with no higher ambition
and that never gratifed~--than TO own Il mig
ger, and no other accomplishment than chew.
ing tobacco and shooting at mark But the
contrast between northern man OF the same
birth, education, fortune and pursuits, and
mechanic educated at our tree schools, perhaps