"Set them free and hire them!"
is the reply of others. This, among other effects, would make them a far
more degraded people than they now are. Slavery keeps them identified
with the whites; they are more respectable and respected by far, in this
relation, than they can be, in the circumstances of the case, if they
are detached from the whites. There is no expression which conveys a
more absolute error than this, and we often meet with it: "He ceased to
be a slave, and became a man." I read lately the report of a lecture at
the North, by an eminent gentleman, of great moral worth, and highly
respected. He said, "A man cannot be, voluntarily, a slave, without
having his manhood crushed out of him." That might be true in our case;
but having seen manhood forced into benighted natures here, and splendid
specimens of man as the result, I was, by this remark, reminded again of
the delusiveness which there is sometimes in the best of logic. You gave
us a good specimen in your admirable illustration of no water in the
moon. A comparison of the slaves with the free negroes of the North, and
in Canada, and with the free colored population in some of the Slave
States, will satisfy any impartial spectator that manhood is full as
conspicuous in the slaves, as a body, as in the free negroes.
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