th. The negro is free, but he can share neither the
rights, nor the pleasures, nor the labor, nor the afflictions, nor the
tomb of him whose equal he has been declared to be; and he cannot meet
him upon fair terms in life or in death.

In the South, where slavery still exists, the negroes are less carefully
kept apart; they sometimes share the labor and the recreations of the
whites; the whites consent to intermix with them to a certain extent,
and although the legislation treats them more harshly, the habits of the
people are more tolerant and compassionate. In the South the master is
not afraid to raise his slave to his own standing, because he knows that
he can in a moment reduce him to the dust at pleasure. In the North the
white no longer distinctly perceives the barrier which separates
him from the degraded race, and he shuns the negro with the more
pertinacity, since he fears lest they should some day be confounded
together.

Amongst the Americans of the South, nature sometimes reasserts her
rights, and restores a transient equality between the blacks and the
whites; but in the North pride restrains the most imperious of human
passions. The American of the Northern States would perhaps allow the
negress to share his licentious pleasures, if the laws of his country
did not declare that she may aspire to be the legitimate partner of his
bed; but he recoils with horror from her who might become his wife.

Thus it is, in the United States, that the prejudice which repels the
negroes seems to increase in proportion as they are emancipated, and
inequality is sanctioned by the manners whilst it is effaced from the
laws of the country. But if the relative position of the two races which
inhabit the United States is such as I have described, it may be asked
why the Americans have abolished slavery in the North of the Union,
why they maintain it in the South, and why they aggravate its hardships
there? The answer is easily given. It is not for the good of the
negroes, but for that of the whites, that measures are taken to abolish
slavery in the United States.

The first negroes were imported into Virginia about the year 1621. *f
In America, therefore, as well as in the rest of the globe, slavery
originated in the South. Thence it spread from one settlement to
another; but the number of slaves diminished towards the Northern
States, and the negro population was always very limited in New England.
*g

[Footnote f: See