swing for it, by ----. But are you sure the slut will die?"

"Not shore, Cunnel, but she can't stand, and the blood _will_ run. I
reckon a hun'red and fifty ar done for thar, sartin."

"D---- the money--I'll make that right. Go to the house and get some
ointment from Madam--she can save her--go at once," said my host.

"I will, Cunnel," replied the dirt-eater, taking his broad-brim from a
wooden peg, and leisurely leaving the cabin. Making our way then over
the piles of rubbish and crowds of children that cumbered the apartment,
the Colonel and I returned to the carriage.

"Dogs must be rare in this region," I remarked, as we resumed our seats.

"Yes, well-trained bloodhounds are scarce everywhere. That dog is well
worth a hundred and fifty dollars."

"The business of nigger-catching, then, is brisk, just now?"

"No, not more brisk than usual. We always have more or less runaways."

"Do most of them take to the swamps?"

"Yes, nine out of ten do, though now and then one gets off on a trading
vessel. It is almost impossible for a strange nigger to make his way by
land from here to the free states."

"Then why do you Carolinians make such an outcry about the violation of
the Fugitive Slave Law?"

"For the same reason that dogs quarrel over a naked bone. We should be
unhappy if we couldn't growl at the Yankees," replied the Colonel,
laughing.

"_We_, you say; you mean by that, the hundred and eighty thousand nabobs
who own five-sixths of your slaves?"[I]

"Yes, I mean them, and the three millions of poor whites--the ignorant,
half-starved, lazy vermin you have just seen. _They_ are the real basis
of our Southern oligarchy, as you call it," continued my host, still
laughing.

"I thought the negroes were the serfs in your feudal system?"

"Both the negroes and the poor whites are the serfs, but the white trash
are its real support. Their votes give the small minority of
slave-owners all their power. You say we control the Union. We do, and
we do it by the votes of these people, who are as far below our niggers
as the niggers are below decent white men. Who that reflects that this
country has been governed for fifty years by such scum, would give a
d---- for republican institutions?"

"It does speak badly for _your_ institutions. A system that reduces
nearly half of a white population to the level of slaves cannot stand in
this country. The late election shows that the power of your 'white
trash' is broken.