CHAPTER VIII.
THE CONDITION AND CHARACTER OF THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES OF THE SOUTH.
Since the growth of the cotton demand has doubled the value
of slave labour, and with it the pecuniary inducement to prevent
negroes from taking care of themselves, hypotheses and
easy methods for justifying the everlasting perpetuation of
slavery have been multiplied. I have not often conversed
with a planter about the condition of the slaves, that he did
not soon make it evident, that a number of these were on
service in his own mind, naïvely falling back from one to
another, if a few inquiries about matters of fact were addressed
him without obvious argumentative purpose. The
beneficence of slavery is commonly urged by an exposition
not only of the diet, and the dwellings, and the jollity, and
the devotional eloquence of the negroes, but also by demonstrations
of the high mental attainments to which individuals
are already found to be arriving. Thus, there is always at
hand, some negro mathematician, who is not merely held to
be far in advance of the native Africans, but who beats most
white men in his quickness and accuracy in calculation, and
who is at the same time considered to be so thoroughly trustworthy,
that he is constantly employed by his master as an
accountant and collecting agent; or some negro whose reputation
for ingenuity and skill in the management and repair
of engines, sugar-mills, cotton-presses, or other machinery,
