American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses

OBJECTION V.—'IT IS FOR THE INTEREST OF THE MASTERS TO TREAT THEIR SLAVES WELL.'

332  only could not get beyond the long reach of the driver's whip—and he a stage driver, a class generous next to the sailor, in the sober hour of morning —and borne in silence—and told to show that the colored man of the south was kindly treated—all evincing, to an unutterable extent, that the temper of the south toward the slave is merciless, even to diabolism—and that the north regards him with, if possible, a more fiendish indifference still!" It seems but an act of simple justice to say, in conclusion, that many of the slaveholders from whom our northern visitors derive their information of the "good treatment" of the slave, may not design to deceive them. Such visitors are often, perhaps generally, brought in contact with the better class of slaveholders, whose slaves are really better fed, clothed, lodged, and housed; more moderately worked; more seldom whipped, and with less severity, than the slaves generally. Those masters in speaking of the good condition of their slaves, and asserting that they are treated well, use terms that are not absolute but comparative: and it may be, and doubtless often is true that their slaves are treated well as slaves, in comparison with the treatment received by slaves generally. So the overseers of such slaves, and the slaves themselves, may, without lying or designing to mislead, honestly give the same testimony. As the great body of slaves within their knowledge fare worse, it is not strange that, when speaking of the treatment on their own plantation, they should call it good. [Page 132] OBJECTION V.—'IT IS FOR THE INTEREST OF THE MASTERS TO TREAT THEIR SLAVES WELL.' So it is for the interest of the drunkard to quit his cups; for the glutton to curb his appetite; for the debauchee to bridle his lust; for the sluggard to be up betimes; for the spendthrift to be economical, and for all sinners to stop sinning. Even if it were for the interest of masters to treat their slaves well, he must be a novice who thinks that a proof that the slaves are well treated. The whole history of man is a record of real interests sacrificed to present gratification. If all men's actions were consistent with their best interests, folly and sin would be words without meaning. If the objector means that it is for the pecuniary interests of masters to treat their slaves well, and thence infers their good treatment, we reply, that though the love of money is strong, yet appetite and lust, pride, anger and  333 revenge, the love of power and honor, are each an overmatch for it; and when either of them is roused by a sudden stimulant, the love of money is worsted in the grapple with it. Look at the hourly lavish outlays of money to procure a momentary gratification for those passions and appetites. As the desire for money is, in the main, merely a desire for the means of gratifying other desires, or rather for one of the means, it must be the servant not the sovereign of those desires, to whose gratification its only use is to minister. But even if the love of money were the strongest human passion, who is simple enough to believe that it is all the time so powerfully excited, that no other passion or appetite can get the mastery over it? Who does not know that gusts of rage, revenge, jealousy and lust drive it before them as a tempest tosses a feather? The objector has forgotten his first lessons; they taught him that it is human nature to gratify the uppermost passion: and is prudence the upper-most passion with slaveholders, and self-restraint their great characteristic ? The strongest feeling of any moment is the sovereign of that moment, and rules. Is a propensity to practice economy the predominant feeling with slaveholders? Ridiculous! Every northerner knows that slaveholders are proverbial for lavish expenditures, never higgling about the price of a gratification. Human passions have not, like the tides, regular ebbs and flows, with their stationary, high and low water marks. They are a dominion convulsed with revolutions; coronations and dethronements in ceaseless succession—each ruler a usurper and a despot. Love of money gets a snatch at the sceptre as well as the rest, not by hereditary right, but because, in the fluctuations of human feelings, a chance wave washes him up to the throne, and the...