extreme and fanatical devotees of slavery. "I've been told a hundred times I should be killed if I were not more prudent in expressing my opinions, but, when it comes to killing, I'm as good as the next man, and they know it. I never came the worst out of a fight yet since I was a boy. I never am afraid to speak what I think to anybody. I don't think I ever shall be."
"Are there many persons here who have as bad an opinion of slavery as you have?"
"I reckon you never saw a conscientious man who had been brought up among slaves who did not think of it pretty much as I do—did you?"
"Yes, I think I have, a good many."
"Ah, self-interest warps men's minds wonderfully, but I don't believe there are many who don't think so, sometimes—it's impossible, I know, that they don't."
"Were there any others in this neighbourhood, I asked, who avowedly hated slavery? He replied that there were a good many mechanics, all the mechanics he knew, who felt slavery to be a great curse to them, and who wanted to see it brought to an end in some way. The competition in which they were constantly made to feel themselves engaged with slave-labour was degrading to them, and they felt it to be so. He knew a poor, hard-working man who was lately offered the services of three negroes for six years each if he would let them learn his trade, but he refused the proposal with indignation, saying he would starve before he helped a slave to become a mechanic.[1] There was a good deal of talk now among them*
- ↑ At Wilmington, North Carolina, on the night of the 27th of July (1857), the frame-work of a new building was destroyed by a number of persons, and a placard attached to the disjointed lumber, stating that a similar course would be pursued in all cases, against edifices that should be erected by negro contractors or carpenters, by one of which class of men the house had been constructed. There was a public meeting called a few days afterwards, to take this outrage into con-*
