From Detroit he had made his way into Kentucky, had
married a rich wife with many slaves, and had become a vehement partisan
for slavery. But because he was born in the same State with myself, and
because I could tell him much about that people that were once his
people, he was glad to have me stop with him. Being old and choleric, he
would go off into a fierce passion against the abolitionists. He would
say: "These men are thieves! Our niggers are our property, and they
steal our property. They might as well steal our horses." After awhile
he would begin to talk about his children. He would say: "These niggers
are ruining my children! My girls are good for nothing! They can not
help themselves! They are so helpless they can not even pick up a
needle. And my boys! These niggers are ruining my boys! My boys won't
work!" And then he would _go_ on to tell the nameless vices the young
men of the city were drawn into through their intimacy with the blacks.
I thought, but did not say, "My dear sir, if slavery is working such a
ruin on your own children, would not the abolitionists be doing you a
kindness if they would steal every nigger you have got?"
But there was a still graver aspect that this question was beginning to
assume: A woman that is a slave has neither the motive nor the power to
protect her own virtue; and the land was threatened to be filled with a
nation of mulattoes.
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