"This is one effect of slavery. It takes mothers, wives, daughters, away
from occupations which, though honorable, do not always elevate them in
the eyes of the other sex. Perhaps there is no value (and some will say
it) in all this; that every labor and service is right and good for
woman; and that we are to prefer a state of society where woman does
these things with her own hands, instead of having them done for her,
and that this is our only safeguard against luxury and degeneracy. I
will not debate it. I am only showing that, tried by an ordinary
test,--the position of woman,--Southerners are really not barbarians."
"I verily believe," said Mrs. North, "that if you take the Southern
constitution and give it a Northern training, the result is as perfect a
specimen of man or woman as is to be found on earth."
"People at the North," said I, "may, in their zeal against slavery, make
light of the abounding sustenance which the slaves enjoy, and call it a
low and gross thing in comparison with 'freedom;' but, in the view of
all political economists and publicists, how to feed the lower classes
is a great problem. It is solved in slavery.
"There is another topic," I added, "which is interesting and important.
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