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It is really astonishing to hear that men in this enlightened age should for a moment hesitate in regard to the propriety of allowing persons of African descent to testify in courts of justice, especially in cases where their own life, liberty, or property is involved. It is the most cruel mockery to call them free, and yet deny this essential right; it is, moreover, the most palpable and unblushing hypocrisy. In the name of Heaven, who could possibly be injured by such an act of simple justice in behalf of an unhappy race who have long submitted cheerfully to bondage, and who have only accepted liberty when it has been tendered to them? Every lawyer of philosophic mind would say at once, that to allow freedmen to testify, in any case, would be attended with no evil consequence whatever to those who were free from nativity. Each witness brought into court to give evidence would be necessarily subjected to examination and cross-examination, and an astute and unprejudiced jury would then determine how far such evidence was entitled to credence. I can well imagine a thousand cases in which this same right to testify might, in its exercise, be eminently beneficial to white citizens—yea, lives might be saved from the scaffold, character be rescued from undeserved discredit, and the most valuable property rights be secured from destruction, by the veracious, manly, and unprejudiced testimony of one who had himself been born a slave. It is heartlessly unjust to the black man to assert that he is less a respecter of truth and less inclined to the exercise of justice than the white man. I have lived among this race all my life, and what I now say on this subject is the fruit of more than half a century's experience and observation.

At any rate, I now feel authorized again to declare to that portion of my fellow-countrymen of the South who are still perilously tampering with this delicate and important matter, that there is no possible ground for hoping that the white men of the South will themselves be restored to their suspended civic rights until they consent themselves to do justice to others.

By-the-by, I see that the Freedmen's Bureau has been given (and rightfully too) increased powers in the State of Tennessee, in consequence of this strange conduct on the part of the Legislature.

S 2

CHAPTER XVIII.

Observations mainly upon the Facts recited in the preceding Chapters.

I PROPOSE now to bring this volume to a conclusion with the presentation of a few additional observations, having reference, either direct or indirect, to facts already brought to notice, or to others too obvious and familiar to have required an earlier specification.

1. No clearer proposition could, in my judgment, be possibly stated than the one insisted on so emphatically in all that I have heretofore written, that the war, from the devastation and suffering of which the country is now slowly emerging, did not necessarily grow out of the fact that African slavery existed in the South, and did not exist in the North, and that there was not really any thing worthy the notice of a philosophic mind in the fact that, while white men and white women in the North performed the greater part of all the rougher physical labor, and voluntarily, this was done in the South chiefly by persons of a black or brown complexion, and after the manner that has been called involuntary. The truth is, that the opposition to the continuance of African slavery in the region wherein it has just become extinct, as the inevitable result of the war that has been for four years raging, was confined in the North to, comparatively speaking, a very small number of persons, and still fewer of these were, until very recently at least, possessed of

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any large amount of influence over the general public mind of the country. Outside of small fanatical and political cliques, there was not, even as late as five years ago, any strong antagonism of sentiment between the slaveholding and the non-slaveholding sections of the ́republic. As for any antagonism of pecuniary interest in connection with Southern slaveholding, the ascertained exist1 ence of which, as a source of large pecuniary gain, if believed also to be permanent, might, in an age so mercenary as ours, prove, perhaps, to some extent, productive of a sort of reciprocal rivalry of feeling, this is the merest phantom that ever vexed the over-fevered brain of a fanciful visionary. The pecuniary interests of the North and South, in connection with slaveholding, it is true, were not identical, but so far were they also from being conflicting and irreconcilable, that they were positively in perfect accord with each other, and were, anterior to the war, constantly multiplying and intensifying ties of sympathetic kindness between the two sections. There is no necessary antagonism between the blacksmith and the miller, the fisherman and the hunter of game, the culti vator of the land and the mariner who plows the fields of ocean. On the contrary, all of them, and a thousand diverse but not necessarily hostile classes besides, may not only subsist in quiet as members of the same community, but their very differences of employment, leading them naturally into the interested reciprocation of the respective products of their labor, must necessarily generate amity instead of hostility. It is quite safe to affirm that, anterior to the war, there was more capital in the North than in the South dependent for its profitable employment

upon the African slaveholding system. The growers of cotton, sugar, tobacco, and other slave-raised products in the South, though their multiplied responsibilities, moral as well as physical, were indeed most burdensome, derived far less of clear profit from the outlay of their capi tal than did the merchants and manufacturers of the North, and the other numerous classes dependent upon them. The truth of this statement was alike manifest in innumerable instances of individual fortune in the North, arising, directly or indirectly, from the slaveholding system-in the rapid and unprecedented growth of large commercial marts, and in the innumerous ramifications of manufacturing industry. It is said in Holy Writ that "where a man's treasure is, there will his heart be also," and thus it undoubtedly was in the case under consider ation. It was not in nature for those who were, daily and hourly, over the whole North, becoming richer and richer from the cultivation of Southern soil by the sons and daughters of Africa, to cherish feelings of illibera hatred for those whose skillful and vigilant administra tion of a system to them so productive of gain was constantly increasing the aggregate quantity of their wealth. and with it the means of luxurious accommodation, of extended influence, and of magnificent liberality. There are many who write and speak on this subject, and whe speak and write, too, most flippantly and plausibly, whe really imagine because they, before the war, hated the slaveholding system of the South, the whole people c the North did the same thing. There never was a grea: er mistake committed. I have had in my time much in terest in looking into the truth of this matter, and hav

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enjoyed good opportunities too of finding out actual facts, and I aver now that it is my solemn and fixed conviction that there were not, five years ago, two twentieths of the whole Northern population who would not have greatly preferred slavery to continue in the South for an indefinite period, to participating, in the least degree, in its sudden extinction. It is, indeed, not at all important to discuss this matter at present with a view to the possible revival of African slavery in the South at any future time. The man any where who calculates upon such a revival is not far from being a fit subject for some insane asylum. African slavery in the South is indeed gone forever, and I am confident that there are not one thousand intelligent persons in that region, of all the former slaveholding class, who would now resuscitate this defunct system if they had it ever so much in their power to do so. But it is important that the large and influential class in the South who were former owners of slaves, and who for many years to come will undoubtedly exercise a most potential influence there, should be assured, in an authentic and satisfactory manner, that the destruction of their property was not deliberately sought by a majority of their Northern fellow-citizens, but that their present condition-so far, at least, as any one in the North is responsible for it—is the result of influences originally very feeble and limited in their scope of operation, and whose capacity for mischief has been supplied in a great degree by the indiscretion and overweening ambition of individuals holding high official position among themselves. Secession is chiefly accountable for the destruction of African slavery. The combined action of extremists of the North