ified the character
and changed the habits of the natives of the South.

I have already explained the influence which slavery has exercised upon
the commercial ability of the Americans in the South; and this same
influence equally extends to their manners. The slave is a servant who
never remonstrates, and who submits to everything without complaint. He
may sometimes assassinate, but he never withstands, his master. In the
South there are no families so poor as not to have slaves. The citizen
of the Southern States of the Union is invested with a sort of domestic
dictatorship, from his earliest years; the first notion he acquires
in life is that he is born to command, and the first habit which he
contracts is that of being obeyed without resistance. His education
tends, then, to give him the character of a supercilious and a hasty
man; irascible, violent, and ardent in his desires, impatient of
obstacles, but easily discouraged if he cannot succeed upon his first
attempt.

The American of the Northern States is surrounded by no slaves in
his childhood; he is even unattended by free servants, and is usually
obliged to provide for his own wants. No sooner does he enter the world
than the idea of necessity assails him on every side: he soon learns
to know exactly the natural limit of his authority; he never expects to
subdue those who withstand him, by force; and he knows that the surest
means of obtaining the support of his fellow-creatures, is to win their
favor. He therefore becomes patient, reflecting, tolerant, slow to act,
and persevering in his designs.

In the Southern States the more immediate wants of life are always
supplied; the inhabitants of those parts are not busied in the material
cares of life, which are always provided for by others; and their
imagination is diverted to more captivating and less definite objects.
The American of the South is fond of grandeur, luxury, and renown, of
gayety, of pleasure, and above all of idleness; nothing obliges him
to exert himself in order to subsist; and as he has no necessary
occupations, he gives way to indolence, and does not even attempt what
would be useful.

But the equality of fortunes, and the absence of slavery in the North,
plunge the inhabitants in those same cares of daily life which are
disdained by the white population of the South. They are taught from
infancy to combat want, and to place comfort above all the pleasures
of the intellect or the heart