The very fact of the African being thus degraded
led, by natural association, to the degradation of those forms of
labor most frequently delegated to the slave. By this means free
labor became gradually to be considered more and more disreputable,
and self-support to be considered less and less honorable. The
necessities of slavery, as well as the constantly growing pride of
class, tended very rapidly toward the subversion of free thought
and free speech; so that, even with the white man of any and every
class, the right to hold and express opinions different from those
entertained by the bulk of the master-class with reference to all
those subjects related to the social system of the South soon came
to be questioned, and eventually utterly denied. All these facts the
North--that is, the Northern people, Northern statesmen, Northern
thinkers--have comprehended _as_ facts. Their influence and
bearings, I may be allowed to say, they have little understood,
because they have not sufficiently realized their influence upon
the minds of those subjected, generation after generation, to their
sway.
"On the other hand, the wide difference between the _political_
systems of the North and the South seems never to have affected the
Northern mind at all. The Northern statesmen and political writers
seem always to have proceeded upon the assumption that the removal
of slavery, the changing of the legal status of the African,
resulting in the withdrawal of one of the props which supported
the _social_ system of the South, would of itself overthrow
not only that system, but the political system which had grown up
along with it, and which was skillfully designed for its maintenance
and support.
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