"To suppose, however, that the master will pause while he thus weighs the danger exactly, and then deliberately act as, upon reflection, he considers the necessities of the case demand, is absurd. The mere circumstance of his doing so would nourish a hopeful spirit in the slave, and stimulate him to consider how he could best avoid all punishment. Hence the instinct-like habit of precaution with individuals, and hence the frenzy which often seizes whole communities.
"But 'planters sleep unguarded, and with their bedroom doors open.' So, as it was boasted, did the Emperor at Biarritz, and with greater bravery, because the assassin of Napoleon would be more sure, in despatching him, that there would be no one left with a vital interest to secure punishment for such a deed: and because, if he failed, Napoleon dare never employ such exemplary punishment for his enemies as would the planters for theirs. The emperors of the South are the whole free society of the South, and it is a society of mutual assurance. Against a slave who has the disposition to become an assassin, his emperor has a bodyguard, which, for general effectiveness, is to the Cent Garde as your right hand is to your right hand's glove.
"It is but a few months since, in Georgia or Alabama, a man treated another precisely as Mr. Brooks treated Mr. Sumner—coming up behind him, with the fury of a madman, and felling him with a bludgeon; killing him by the first blow, however, and then discharging vengeance by repeated strokes upon his senseless body.[1] The man thus pitifully*
- ↑ The late Mr. Brooks' character should be honestly considered, now that personal enmity toward him is impossible. That he was courteous, accomplished, warm-hearted, and hot-blooded, dear as a friend and fearful as an enemy, may be believed by all; but, in the South, his name is yet never mentioned without the term gallant or courageous, spirited or noble, is also attached to it; and we are obliged to ask, why insist on this? The truth is, we include a habit of mind in these terms which slavery has rendered, in a great degree, obsolete in the South. The
