‘I’m glad you think slavery will not exist during the millennium,’ I replied, laughing; ’but how is it that you insist the negro is naturally inferior to the white, and still admit that the ‘white trash’ are far below the black slaves?’

’Education makes the difference.  We educate the negro enough to make him useful to us, but the poor white man knows nothing.  He can neither read nor write, and not only that, he is not trained to any useful employment.  Sandy, here, who is a fair specimen of the tribe, obtains his living just like an Indian, by hunting, fishing, and stealing, interspersed with nigger-catching.  His whole wealth consists of two hounds and their pups; his house—­even the wooden trough his miserable children eat from—­belongs to me.  If he didn’t catch a runaway nigger once in a while, he wouldn’t see a dime from one year to another.’

‘Then you have to support this man and his family?’

’Yes, what I don’t give him, he steals.  Half-a-dozen others poach on me in the same way.’

‘Why don’t you set them at work?’

’They can’t be made to work.  I have hired them time and again, hoping to make something of them, but I never got one to work more than half-a-day at a time.  It’s their nature to lounge and to steal.’

‘Then why do you keep them about you?’

’Well, to be candid, their presence is of use in keeping the blacks in subordination, and they are worth all they cost me, because I control their votes.’

‘I thought the blacks were said to be entirely contented?’

’No, not contented.  I do not claim that.  I only say that they are unfit for freedom.  I might cite a hundred instances in which it has been their ruin.’

’I have never heard of one.  It seems strange to me that a man who can support another can not support himself.’

’Oh! no, it’s not at all strange.  The slave has hands, and when the master gives him brains, he works well enough; but to support himself he needs both hands and brains, and he has only hands.  I’ll give you a case in point:  At Wilmington, N.C., some years ago lived a negro by the name of Jack Campbell.  He was a slave, and he was employed, before the river below the town was deepened so as to admit of the passage of large vessels, in lightering cargoes up to the city.  He hired his time of his master, and carried on business on his own account.  Every one knew him, and his character for honesty, sobriety, and punctuality stood so high that his word was considered among merchants as good as that of the first business-men of the place.  Well, Jack’s wife and children were free, and he finally took it into his head to be free himself.  He arranged with his master to purchase himself within a specified time, at eight hundred dollars, and was to deposit his earnings, till they reached the required sum, in the hands of a certain merchant.  He went on, and in three years had accumulated nearly seven hundred