- qualifies the slave for any but the simplest and rudest forms of
labour; and every attempt to bring his labour into competition with free labour can only be successful at the hazard of insurrection. Hundreds of slaves in New Orleans must be constantly reflecting and saying to one another, "I am as capable of taking care of myself as this Irish hod-carrier, or this German market-gardener; why can't I have the enjoyment of my labour as well as they? I am as capable of taking care of my own family as much as they of theirs; why should I be subject to have them taken from me by those other men who call themselves our owners? Our children have as much brains as the children of these white neighbours of ours, who not long ago were cooks and waiters at the hotels; why should they be spurned from the school-rooms? I helped to build the school-*house, and have not been paid for it. One thing I know, if I can't have my rights, I can have my pleasures; and if they won't give me wages I can take them."
That this influence of association in labour with free-men cannot fail to be appreciated by intelligent observers, will be evident from the following paragraph from the New Orleans Crescent, although it was probably written to show only the amusing and picturesque aspect of the slave community:—
"Guinea-like.—Passing along Baronne street, between Perdido and
Poydras streets, any Sunday afternoon, the white passer-by might easily
suppose himself in Guinea, Caffraria, or any other thickly-peopled region
in the land of Ham. Where the darkies all come from, what they do
there, or where they go to, constitute a problem somewhat beyond our
algebra. It seems to be a sort of nigger exchange. We know there are in
that vicinity a coloured church, coloured ice-cream saloon, coloured restaurant,
coloured coffee-houses, and a coloured barber-shop, which, we
have heard say, has a back communication with one of the groggeries, for the
benefit of slaves; but as the police haven't found it out yet, we suppose it
ain't so. However, if the ebony dandies who attend Sunday evening 'change,
would keep within their various retreats, or leave a path about three feet wide
on the side-walk, for the free passage of people who are so unlucky as to
be white, we wouldn't complain; but to have to elbow one's way through
