The Memories of Fifty Years: Containing Brief Biographical Notices of Distinguished Americans, and Anecdotes of Remarkable Men; Interspersed with Scenes and Incidents Occurring during a Long Life of Observation Chiefly Spent in the SouthwestSparks, W. H. (William Henry)
History
The Memories of Fifty Years: Containing Brief Biographical Notices of Distinguished Americans, and Anecdotes of Remarkable Men; Interspersed with Scenes and Incidents Occurring during a Long Life of Observation Chiefly Spent in the Southwest
Sparks, W. H. (William Henry)
Georgia -- History -- 1775-1865; Southwest, Old -- History; United States -- Biography
The black man's labor, then, and the white man's intelligence are
necessary to the production and fabrication, for human use, of these
provisions of Providence. This labor the black man will not yield
without compulsion. He is eminently useful under this compulsion, and
eminently useless, even to himself, without it. That he was designed to
obey this authority, and to be most happy when and where he was most
useful, is apparent in his mental and moral organization. By moral I
mean those functions of the nervous system which bring us in relation
with the external world. He aspires to nothing but the gratification of
his passions, and the indulgence of his indolence. He only feels the
oppression of slavery in being compelled to work, and none of the moral
degradation incident to servility in the higher or superior races. He
is, consequently, more happy, and better contented in this, than in any
other condition of life. His morals, his bodily comforts, and his
status as a man, attain to an elevation in this condition known to his
race in no other.
All the results of his condition react upon the superior race, holding
him in the condition designed for him by his Creator, producing results
to human progress all over the world, known to result in an equal ratio
from no other cause. The institution has passed away, and very soon all
its consequences will cease to be visible in the character of the
Southern people. The plantation will dwindle to the truck-patch, the
planter will sink into the grave, and his offspring will degenerate
into hucksters and petty traders, and become as mean and contemptible
as the Puritan Yankee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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