the
principles which I had avowed were just and noble; but that in the
Southern country, whenever they were mentioned, they were always
understood as applying only to white men. Domestic labor was confined
to the blacks, and such was the prejudice that if he, who was the most
popular man in his district, were to keep a white servant in his
house, his character and reputation would be irretrievably ruined.

[Footnote 46: From the "Diary."]

I said that this confounding of the ideas of servitude and labor was
one of the bad effects of slavery; but he thought it attended with
many excellent consequences. It did not apply to all kinds of
labor--not, for example, to farming. He himself had often held the
plow; so had his father. Manufacturing and mechanical labor was not
degrading. It was only manual labor--the proper work of slaves. No
white person could descend to that. And it was the best guarantee to
equality among the whites. It produced an unvarying level among them.
It not only did not excite, but did not even admit of inequalities by
which one white man could domineer over another.

I told Calhoun I could not see things in the same light. It is, in
truth, all perverted sentiment--mistaking labor for slavery, and
dominion for freedom. The discussion of the Missouri question has
betrayed the secret of their souls. In the abstract they admit that
slavery is an evil, they disclaim all participation in the
introduction of it, and cast it all upon the shoulders of our old
granddam Britain. But when probed to the quick upon it, they show at
the bottom of their souls pride and vainglory in their condition of
masterdom. They fancy themselves more generous and noble-hearted than
the plain freemen who labor for subsistence. They look down upon the
simplicity of a Yankee's manners, because he has no habits of
overbearing like theirs and can not treat negroes like dogs.

It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very sources of
moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice;
for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine which
makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the
color of the skin? It perverts human reason, and reduces man endowed
with logical powers to maintain that slavery is sanctioned by the
Christian religion, that slaves are happy and contented in their
condition, that between master and slave there are ties of mutual
attachment and affection, tha