The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-02-01

A little scrap from The New York
World put me to thinking. A certain
Englishman named Hobson lectured Sum
day night in Philadelphia on ethics and
asked il 1t was right to accept charity
from ill-gotten gains or from such men
as Carnegie, Rockefeller and Rhodes, who
made their fortunes by monopolies and
trusts and crushing out the small deal
ers.
The editor of The World answers, eff
charity money is to be scanned and dis
infected where shall the process stop?
Shall we boycott Faneuil hall, the cradle
of liberty, because it was built from the
profits. the blood money of Peter
Faneuil's slaves? The jolly Bachelor
and from his slave trade and selling
beads and watered rum to the Indians?
These were the bases of many New Eng
land fortunes now being used for gener-
Gus purposes. We are inclined to say
let charity have what it can get. The
more sinful the channel through which
fortunes have come the better it is that
it should now be diverted to good uses
Luther said it was folly to let the devil
have all the good tunes. That is good
doctrine" God sent it, but the devil
brought it, has good foundation. But
] diden't know that the cradle of Amerl-
can liberty was built with money made
in the cradle of American slavery. APP
pletiOn say that prior to 1116 New Eng
land had brought from Africa over BOO
coo slaves and sold them further South,
and for awhile they were in such de-
mand that the negro traders in Massa-
chusetts seized and sold the young In
dams who had strayed too far from their
wigwams and they actually stole and
carried away and sold the son of King
Philip, an Indian chief who was at
peace with the whites. But what would
not people do who would burn or drown
women as witches as they did at Salem?
Ny friend from Oregon seems anxious
to handle my book and sell it, but insists
that l shall make more proof that Gen
eral Grant was a slave owner and hired
them out until the surrender. / referred
him to Grants biography, written by
General James Grant Wilson, who was
chosen by Grant to write it. If his peo-
pie will not believe him, neither would
they believe If one rose from the dead.
The trouble is that most of his people
are either foreigners or of foreign birth
and don't know anything of American
history. The truth is our own people are
profoundly ignorant of the history of
their fathers and forefathers. Not one
in hundred know that Georgia was the
first State that prohibited the African
slave trade Pennsylvania sold negro
slvaes at sheriffs sales as late as 1843.
New England abolished slavery long be-
fore, but continued the Importation from
Africa on the sly until 1861. Our people
bought them because they were profitable
in the cotton fields and in the culture of
rice and sugar cane For twenty years
before the war our best people wished to
abolish slavery, not as an act of hui
mainly, but because they were increasing
so fast and were in the way of poor
white men and were demoralizing to the
sons of the rich and their amalgamation
with the whites was a visible curse in
many families. And so Joseph Henry
Lumpkin, our chief justice, began a cor
respondenee with Henry Clay about his
scheme of gradual emancipation. My
father and many others co-operated with
the plan, but the malignant threats of the