The red ant, however, is still only an occasional slaveowner; if
necessary, he can get along by himself, without the aid of his little
brown servants. Indeed, there are free states and slave states of red
ants side by side with one another, as of old in Maryland and
Pennsylvania: in the first, the red ants do their work themselves, like
mere vulgar Ohio farmers; in the second, they get their work done for
them by their industrious little brown servants, like the aristocratic
first families of Virginia before the earthquake of emancipation.
But there are other degraded ants, whose life-history may be humbly
presented to the consideration of the Anti-Slavery Society, as speaking
more eloquently than any other known fact for the demoralising effect of
slaveowning upon the slaveholders themselves. The Swiss rufescent ant is
a species so long habituated to rely entirely upon the services of
slaves that it is no longer able to manage its own affairs when deprived
by man of its hereditary bondsmen. It has lost entirely the art of
constructing a nest; it can no longer tend its own young, whom it leaves
entirely to the care of negro nurses; and its bodily structure even has
changed, for the jaws have lost their teeth, and have been converted
into mere nippers, useful only as weapons of war. The rufescent ant, in
fact, is a purely military caste, which has devoted itself entirely to
the pursuit of arms, leaving every other form of activity to its slaves
and dependents.
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