The rule is quite the other way; and a very little reflection
will satisfy the reader that such is the case. A man who will
enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for
magnanimity. Men do not love those who remind them of their sins
unless they have a mind to repent--and the mulatto child's face
is a standing accusation against him who is master and father to
the child. What is still worse, perhaps, such a child is a
constant offense to the wife. She hates its very presence, and
when a slaveholding woman hates, she wants not means to give that
hate telling effect. Women--white women, I mean--are IDOLS at
the south, not WIVES, for the slave women are preferred in many
instances; and if these _idols_ but nod, or lift a finger, woe to
the poor victim: kicks, cuffs and stripes are sure to follow.
Masters are frequently compelled to sell this class of their
slaves, out of deference to the feelings of their white wives;
and shocking and scandalous as it may seem for a man to sell his
own blood to the traffickers in human flesh, it is often an act
of humanity <46>toward the slave-child to be thus removed from
his merciless tormentors.

It is not within the scope of the design of my simple story, to
comment upon every phase of slavery not within my experience as a
slave.

But, I may remark, that, if the lineal descendants of Ham are
only to be enslaved, according to the scriptures, slavery in this
country will soon become an unscriptural institution; for
thousands are ushered into the world, annually, who--like
myself--owe their existence to white fathers, and, most
frequently, to their masters, and master's sons. The slave-woman