"
"Ah, Mr. Ogg, they are perfectly fiendish in resenting _that!_"
"Of course, but there's a grand tit-for-tat going through all nature.
Why, sir, the pleasures of the far South, to a man of art and enterprise
like you, far exceed this poor, plain region. Take the roof off slavery
and the blacks have rather the best of it; the whites would think so if
they could see what is going on."
"Politely, Mr. Ogg; will not the entire institution some day blow itself
out, like one of their Western steamboats?"
"No doubt of it, Mr. Ransom. When we have disposed of you, and you can
see the country for yourself, observe how sensitive slaveholding is! A
thousand anxieties lie in it. They believe in insurrections, rapes, and
incendiaries. A perfect sleep they hardly know, but go prowling around
night and day, driven by their suspicions. It makes them warlike, yet
unhappy, and the slaves eat the ground poor. Besides, they have terrible
enemies in the negro-traders, whom they look down on socially, and
really drive them into sympathy with the negroes. Mr. Murrell, for
instance, has a grand plan for a slave insurrection. He says white
society is all against him, and he'll get even with it."
"See me, see me!" hoarsely chimed in another voice. "Slavery is bad
scared, sho'! Joe Leonard Smith, Catholic, over on de western sho', has
jess set twelve niggers free. Governor Charley Ridgely has set two
hundred and fifty free.
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