there was no fault to find with the verdict of the jury. The extreme youth of Johns, and the circumstances in which the killing occurred, enlisted universal sympathy in his favor. There is no doubt that the negro had provoked him to the deed by the use of insolent language; but how often must it be told that words are no justification for blows? There are many persons—and we regret to say it—who think they have the same right to shoot a negro, if he insults them, or even runs from them, that they have to shoot down a dog; but there are laws for the protection of the slave as well as the master, and the sooner the error above alluded to is removed, the better will it be for both parties.
The unfortunate youth who has now entailed upon himself the penalty of the law, we doubt not, had no idea that there existed such penalty; and even if he was aware of the fact, the repeated insults and taunts of the negro go far to mitigate the crime. Johns was defended by I. D. Gildart, Esq., who probably did all that could have been effected in his defence.
The Democrat adds:
We learn from Mr. Curry, deputy sheriff, of Wilkinson County, that Johns has been pardoned by the governor. We are gratified to hear it.
This error above alluded to, of thinking it is as innocent to shoot down a negro as a dog, is one, we fairly admit, for which young Johns ought not to be very severely blamed. He has been educated in a system of things of which this opinion is the inevitable result; and he, individually, is far less guilty for it, than are those men who support the system of laws, and keep up the educational influences, which lead young Southern men directly to this conclusion. Johns may be, for aught we know, as generous-hearted and as just naturally as any young man living; but the horrible system under which he has been educated has rendered him incapable of distinguishing what either generosity or justice is, as applied to the negro.
The public sentiment of the slave states is the sentiment of men who have been thus educated, and in all that concerns the negro it is utterly blunted and paralyzed. What would seem to them injustice and horrible wrong in the case of white persons, is the coolest matter of course in relation to slaves. As this educational influence descends from generation to generation, the moral sense becomes more and more blunted, and the power of discriminating right from wrong, in what relates to the subject race, more and more enfeebled.
Thus, if we read the writings of distinguished men who were slave-holders about the time of our American Revolution, what clear views do we find expressed of the injustice of slavery, what strong language of reprobation do we find applied to it! Nothing more forcible could possibly be said in relation to its evils than by quoting the language of such men as Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry. In those days there were no men of that high class of mind who thought of such a thing as defending slavery on principle; now there are an abundance of the most distinguished men. North and South, statesmen, civilians, men of letters, even clergymen, who in various degrees palliate it, apologize for or openly defend it. And what is the cause of this, except that educational influences have corrupted public sentiment, and deprived them of the power of just judgment? The public opinion even of free America, with regard to slavery, is behind that of all other civilized nations.
When the holders of slaves assert that they are, as a general thing, humanely treated, what do they mean? Not that they would consider such treatment humane if given to themselves and their children,—no, indeed!—but it is humane for slaves.
They do, in effect, place the negro below the range of humanity, and on a level with brutes, and then graduate all their ideas of humanity accordingly.
They would not needlessly kick or abuse a dog or a negro. They may pet a dog, and they often do a negro. Men have been found who fancied having their horses elegantly lodged in marble stables, and to eat out of sculptured mangers, but they thought them horses still; and, with all the indulgences with which good-natured masters sometimes surround the slave, he is to them but a negro still, and not a man.
In what has been said in this chapter, and in what appears incidentally in all the facts cited throughout this volume, there is abundant proof that, notwithstanding there be frequent and most noble instances of generosity towards the negro, and although the sentiment of honorable men and the voice of Christian charity does everywhere protest against what it feels to be inhumanity, yet the popular sentiment engendered by the system must necessarily fall deplorably short of giving anything like sufficient protection to the rights of the slave. It will appear in the succeeding chapters, as it must already have appeared to reflecting minds, that the whole course of educational influence upon the mind of the slave-master is such as to deaden his mind to those appeals which come from the negro as a fellow-man and a brother.
