ntleman,
having embraced the side of the rebellious colonies in their struggle
against England, was by no means on a bed of roses. He bore King George's
commission, and was a major in the British army, but having married a
great Carolina heiress, and become proprietor of these plantations, sided
with the country of his adoption, and not that of his birth, in the war
between them, and was a special object of animosity on that account to the
English officers who attacked the sea-board of Georgia, and sent troops on
shore and up the Altamaha, to fetch off the negroes, or incite them to
rise against their owners. 'De British,' said Molly 'make old massa run
about bery much in de great revelation war.' He ran effectually, however,
and contrived to save both his life and property from the invader.

Molly's account was full of interest, in spite of the grotesque lingo in
which it was delivered, and which once or twice nearly sent me into
convulsions of laughing, whereupon she apologized with great gravity for
her mispronunciation, modestly suggesting that _white words_ were
impossible to the organs of speech of black folks. It is curious how
universally any theory, no matter how absurd, is accepted by these people,
for anything in which the contemptuous supremacy of the dominant race is
admitted, and their acquiescence in the theory of their own incorrigible
baseness is so complete, that this, more than any other circumstance in
their condition, makes me doubtful of their rising from it.

In order to set poor dear old Molly's notions straight with regard to the
negro incapacity for speaking plain the noble white words, I called
S---- to me and set her talking; and having pointed out to Molly how very
imperfect her mode of pronouncing many words was, convinced the worthy old
negress that want of training, and not any absolute original impotence,
was the reason why she disfigured the _white words_, for which she had
such a profound respect. In this matter, as in every other, the slaves pay
back to their masters the evil of their own dealings with usury, though
unintentionally. No culture, however slight, simple, or elementary, is
permitted to these poor creatures, and the utterance of many of them is
more like what Prospero describes Caliban's to have been, than the speech
of men and women in a Christian and civilised land: the children of their
owners, brought up among them, acquire their negro mode of
talking;--slavish speech