ed. Under these
circumstances the general body of planters, who were in the main
adventurers of the freest type, were fain to establish connections with
such of the slave-women as attracted their sympathy, through personal
comeliness or aptitude in domestic affairs, or, usually, both combined.
There was ordinarily in this beginning of the seventeenth century no
Vashti that needed expulsion from the abode of a plantation Ahasuerus
to make room for the African Esther to be admitted to the chief place
within the portals. One great natural consequence of this was the
extension to the relatives or guardians of the bondswoman so preferred
of an amount of favour which, in the case of the more capable males,
completes the parallel we have been drawing by securing for each of
them the precedence and responsibilities of a Mordecai. The offspring
of these natural alliances came in therefore to cement more intimately
the union of interests which previous relations had generated. Beloved
by their fathers, and in many cases destined by them to a lot superior
[245] to that whereto they were entitled by formal law and social
prescription, these young procreations--Mulattos, as they were
called--were made the objects of special and careful provisions on the
fathers' part. They were, according to the means of their fathers in
the majority of cases, sent for education and training to European or
other superior institutions. After this course they were either
formally acknowledged by their fathers, or, if that was impracticable,
amply and suitably provided for in a career out of their native colony.
To a reflecting mind there is something that interests, not to say
fascinates, in studying the action and reaction upon one another of
circumstances in the existence of the Mulatto. As a matter of fact, he
had much more to complain of under the slave system than his
pure-blooded African relations. The law, by decreeing that every child
of a freeman and a slave woman must follow the fortune of the womb,
thus making him the property of his mother exclusively, practically
robbed him before his very birth of the nurture and protection of a
father. His reputed father had no obligation to be even aware of his
procreation, and nevertheless [246] --so inscrutable are the ways of
Providence!--the Mulatto was the centre around which clustered the
outraged instincts of nature in rebellion against the desecrating
mandates that prescribed treason to