But the goings-on of life, at the
South, with its alleviations and comforts, the practical mitigations of
an oppressive system, theoretical evils qualified by difference of
color, constitution, and history, and all the goodness and mercy which
Christianity and a well-ordered state of society provide, we at the
North do not see. Nor do our people consider that running away, and the
complaints of the slaves, are partly chargeable to the discontent and
restlessness of human nature; but we seem to take it for granted that
every one who flees from the South is as though he had escaped from a
prison-ship.
While at the North, I remember reading an article, signed with initials,
in a prominent Massachusetts magazine, which contained this sentence:
"Arsenic is universally in possession of the negroes; but it is
considered the part of wisdom, where families are poisoned, that the
fact should be kept as secret as possible." This was brought very
powerfully to my mind one day on passing through King Street, in
Charleston, and seeing for a painted sign over an apothecary's shop, a
tall, benevolent-looking negro, in his shirt sleeves, behind a golden
mortar, with the pestle in his hands, as though at work.
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