a crowd of woolly-heads on such a day as yesterday, their natural muskiness made more villanous by the fumes of whisky, is too much for delicate olfactories like ours. A fight, last evening, between two white men at one of the groggeries, afforded much edification to the darkies standing around, and seemed to confirm them in their opinion, that white folks, after all, ain't much."
Similar complaints to the following, which I take from the
New Orleans Crescent, I have heard, or seen in the journals,
at Richmond, Savannah, Louisville, and most other large
manufacturing, or commercial towns of the South.
"Passes to Negroes.—Something must be done to regulate and prescribe
the manner in which passes shall be given to slaves. This is a
matter that should no longer be shirked or avoided. The Common Council
should act promptly. The slave population of this city is already demoralized
to a deplorable extent, all owing to the indiscriminate licence and
indulgence extended them by masters, mistresses, and guardians, and to
the practice of forging passes, which has now become a regular business in
New Orleans. The greater portion of the evil flows from forged passes.
As things now stand, any negro can obtain a pass for four bits or a dollar,
from miserable wretches who obtain a living by such infamous practices.
The consequence is that hundreds spend their nights drinking, carousing,
gambling, and contracting the worst of habits, which not only make them
useless to their owners, but dangerous pests to society. We know of many
negroes, completely ruined, morally and physically, by such causes. The
inherent vice in the negro character always comes out when unrestrained,
and there is no degradation too low for him to descend.
"Well, for the remedy to cure this crying evil. Prosecuting the forgers is out of the question; for where one conviction could be obtained, thousands of fraudulent passes would be written. Slave evidence weighs nothing against white forgers and scoundrels. Hence the necessity of adopting some other mode of prevention. It has been suggested to us, that if the Council would adopt a form for passes, different each month, to be obtained by masters from the Chief of Police, exclusively, that a great deal of good would be at once accomplished. We have no doubt of it. Further, we believe that all owners and guardians would cheerfully submit to the inconvenience in order to obtain so desirable an end. We trust the Common Council will pay some little attention to these suggestions."
How many men, accustomed to the close calculations necessary
to successful enterprises, can listen to these suggestions,
without asking themselves whether a system, that requires to
