to illustrate the financial value of the American slave, and inferentially the progress he had made in acquiring the arts of modern civilization.  Slaves had become blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carriage-makers, carpenters, bricklayers, tailors, bootmakers, founders and moulders, not to mention all the common labor performed by them.  Slave women had become dressmakers, hairdressers, nurses and the best cooks to be found in the world.  The slave-holders regarded themselves as the favored of mankind because of the competence and faithfulness of their slaves.  The African spirit and character had disappeared, and in their place were coming into being the elements of a new character, existing in 1860 purely in a negative form.  The slave had become an American.  He was now a civilized slave, and had received his civilization from his masters.  He had separated himself very far from his brother slave in St. Domingo.  The Haytian Negro fought and won his freedom before he had been civilized in slavery, and hence has never passed over the same ground that his American fellow-servant has been compelled to traverse.

Beside the slaves in the South, there were also several thousand “free persons of color,” as they were called, dwelling in such cities as Richmond, Va., Charleston, S.C., and New Orleans, La.  Some of these had become quite wealthy and well-educated, forming a distinct class of the population.  They were called Creoles in Louisiana, and were accorded certain privileges, although laws were carefully enacted to keep alive the distinction between them and the whites.  In Charleston the so-called colored people set themselves up as a class, prided themselves much upon their color and hair and in their sympathies joined almost wholly with the master class.  Representatives of their class became slave-holders and were in full accord with the social policy of the country.  Nevertheless their presence was an encouragement to the slave, and consequently was objected to by the slave-holder.  The free colored man became more and more disliked in the South as the slave became more civilized.  He was supposed by his example to contribute to the discontent of the slave, and laws were passed restricting his priveleges so as to induce him to leave.  Between 1850 and 1860 this question reached a crisis and free colored people from the South were to be seen taking up their homes in the Northern States and in Canada. (Many of the people, especially from Charleston, carried with them all their belittling prejudices, and after years of sojourn under the sway of enlightened and liberal ideas, proved themselves still incapable of learning the new way or forgetting the old.)