There is less
solicitation at the South; here it is a nightly trade, without disguise.
At the South the young must go in search of opportunity; here it
confronts them. The small number of yellow children in the interior of
the Cotton States, on 'lone plantations,' is positive proof against the
ready suspicions and accusations of Northern people. Let all be true
which is said of 'yellow women,' 'slave-breeders,' and every form of
lechery, he is simple who does not believe that the statistics of a
certain wickedness at the North would, if made as public as difference
of color makes the same statistics at the South, leave no room for us to
arraign and condemn the South in this particular. Their clergy, their
husbands, their young men, if they are no better, are no worse than we.
But there is nothing in which the self-righteousness created by
anti-slavery views and feelings is more conspicuous than in the way in
which the South is judged and condemned by us with regard to this one
sin. Had the pulpits of the South afforded such dreadful instances of
frailty, for the last ten or fifteen years, as we have had at the North,
what confirmation would we have found for our invectives against the
corrupting and 'barbarous' influence of slavery!
"How the morbid fancy of a Northerner loves to gloat over occasional
instances of violence at the South, and is never employed in depicting
scenes of betrayal and cruelty which our policemen in large cities could
recount by scores.
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