“The slaves were few in the North,” responded the General; “as chattels they made but a slim fraction of that region's riches. Moreover, slavery did not pay a Northern profit. It is easy, when there is money loss, to abandon the cause of that loss. But conditions within the present boundaries of slavery show otherwise. The slave's cost of keep is less, his months of labor more in number, and he is not winter-killed with maladies of the lungs. Moreover, your slave makes a fairer unit of labor in rice savannahs and cotton fields, where a plantation carries thousands of acres, than he did where land was more divided and a farm of a hundred and sixty acres the common holding of a man. In short, the slave spins that money profit for the South which was lacking in the North. That fact of profit--the greed of men--will meet folk who would free the slave and make you a mighty difference.” “And still,” said Noah, “slavery should be stricken down.” “To that I agree,” remarked the General, “but again I ask you, How? Certain of our New England radicals, when they shout for Abolition, cry 'Down with slavery!' as lightly as one should say: 'Marry! swallow a strawberry.' When a man is in the upper story of a burning house he does not hurl himself from a window, he descends by the stair. Let us, when now we be ablaze over slavery--for it is that, as you say, to lie at the bottom of this whole movement of States Rights--let us grope cautiously until we find the safe stairway of escape.” “It is not so clear to my mind,” said I, for the spirit to lecture, excited by example, began to move within me, “that slavery is so bad for the blacks. One must have account for a difference of race. You would not insist that a deer tear a prey with his teeth and howl on some hill of midnight like a wolf. It has been the never-flagging mistake of government to deal with the Indian as though he were white, and enforce pale-face conditions upon him. It would be as rife of error to proceed with the negro as though he were white or could work out a white man's destiny. Make the black man free, and I tell you he will be as helpless as a ship ashore on the instant.” “To better the black,” said the General, “is not my argument; I am against slavery to better the white man. When I seek to destroy slavery, it is the master I would free, and not the slave.” Just what the General would intend by this last I had no opportunity to discover, for the zealous Jim was heard at the door, ushering in our Peg.