The state journal. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1883-1885, 1884-01-05

wealth at the South more presumptuous
and Self-asseTting than any other in the
world. and Northern schools and acade
mics were filled with students whose
Boosting and violence filled the towns
with bravo's, and Southern guests at
hotels and summer resorts gave the tone
of the plantation 10 fashionable society.
It was not alone on the cotton States
that this decentralization prev allied. The de-
mand for negroes aad the great prices
offered for them, soon sent speculators Of
low degree through the tobacco States
buying up negroes wherever they could
be found and suddenly opened up pros
poets of profit to the owners in the breed
ing Of negroes for the Southern market
that were too alluring TO be resisted by
any but those Of the most sterling virtue,
and in those States the plantations be
came substantially breel ding farms, where
the marital relation was disregarded, and
the most horrible system of concubinage
was eDcoura ged and prevailed, not even
confined as to the male, to the enslaved
race
The Northern States one after the other
passed laws providing for the gradual
emancipation of their slaves Immediately
after the Constitution was adopted. In
Maryland, Delaware and Virginia, and
even in North Carolina, similar legislation
was contemplated and expected In Vir-
GINA Lespeciallv, he legislature came
at one time within few votes of passing
such q bill, but AFTER the prohibition of
the importation of slaves, and the ap
pearance of the negro traders in the
border States offering from two to three
times the prices ever offered before there
was no more talk or thought Of abolish
ing slavery.
OF the new principles of political econ
only springing up in the South, which if
lieu ofpatriotism substituted ambition, and
raised their dreams of the foundation on
an empire of aTistocrats based upon slave
labor, to which end all their policy was
directed, from the seisure Of Missouri;
their attempts to cripple the North by
abolishing protective duties on imports,
their attempt to establish their right to
take their slaves into free States, hold
them there, down to their effort to seize
the whole Of the territory of the nation to
spread slavery over it, and their final
madness Of secession, it is not within my
province 10 treat. have given this
much space to the story OF the rise of the
evil, that the reader may comprehend, as
| said at the outset. the reasons for the
anu gOnisms that followed, and Of the
several small dramas | shall unfold,
which, while each was separate, Consti-
tuted in their entirety The 'irTepressible
conflict between freedom and slavery
AS the growth of the demand for slaves,
as have described it, increased, the char
actcr of the slavery entirely changed.
Horrible whippings, over-work and
cruelty when the victims fell into the
hands of men OF cruel natures or profit
gate habits, filled the cotton States with
groans and shrieks Of agony; while the
fear of being sold to the rice and cotton
fields, whence the victim rarely or never
returned, gave an expression OF habitual
fear and horror to the faces OF the negroes
Of the border States, and the frequent
runaways, starving, painting and tainting
as they bore their lacerated bodies toward
the north star in hope of freedom, reused
all the sympathy, the courage, the benevO-
lence, Ofthc Northern people in their be-
half, and in detestation of the system
under which they were oppressed.
| have now brought this hasty review
down to the period when, living near the
border between the slave and free States
l saw things which yet call the shudder
to my frame as | remember them, and
often start the tears to my eyes, in SYM
pathy for the little boy who used to hide
himself and weep as though his heart
would break, over sufferings be could not
relieve, wrongs that could not be re-
dressed.