“Now, my good northern friend, not so fast, if you please; I can see the evil of all this, and so can you, if you will but study the negro’s character a little deeper.  The menial man who has passed through generations of oppression, and whose life and soul are blotted from the right of manhood, is sensitive of the power that crushes him.  He has been robbed of the means of elevating himself by those who now accuse him of the crime of degradation:  and, wherever the chance is afforded him of elevation, as that increases so does a tenacious knowledge of his rights; yet, he feels the prejudice that cuts and slights him in his progress, that charges him with the impudence of a negro, that calls his attempts to be a man mere pompous foolery.”

“And it is so!  To see a nigger setting himself up among white folks-it’s perfectly ridiculous!”

“Mark me, Mr. Scranton:  there’s where you northerners mistake yourselves.  The negro seldom desires to mix with whites, and I hold it better they should keep together; but that two races cannot live together without the one enslaving the other is a fallacy popular only with those who will not see the future, and obstinately refuse to review the past.  You must lessen your delicate sensibilities; and when you make them less painful to the man of colour at the north, believe me, the south will respond to the feeling.  Experience has changed my feelings,—­experience has been my teacher.  I have based my new system upon experience; and its working justifies me in all I have said.  Let us set about extracting the poison from our institutions, instead of losing ourselves in contemplating an abstract theory for its government.”

“Remember, deacon, men are not all born to see alike.  There are rights and privileges belonging to the southerner:  he holds the trade in men right, and he would see the Union sundered to atoms before he would permit the intervention of the federal government on that subject,” Mr. Scranton seriously remarks, placing his two thumbs in the armpits of his vest, and assuming an air of confidence, as if to say, “I shall outsouthern the southerner yet, I shall.”

“That’s just the point upon which all the villainy of our institution rests:  the simple word man!-man a progressive being; man a chattel,—­a thing upon which the sordid appetite of every wretch may feed.  Why cannot Africa give up men?  She has been the victim of Christendom-her flesh and blood have served its traffic, have enriched its coffers, and even built its churches; but like a ferocious wolf that preys upon the fold in spite of watchers, she yet steals Afric’s bleeding victims, and frowns upon them because they are not white, nor live as white men live.”

“Mercy on me!” says Mr. Scranton, with a sigh, “you can’t ameliorate the system as it stands:  that’s out of the question.  Begin to loosen the props, and the whole fabric will tumble down.  And then, niggers won’t be encouraged to work at a price for their labour; and how are you going to get along in this climate, and with such an enormous population of vagabonds?”