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CHAPTER VII.
"Woe worth the hour when it is crime
To plead the poor dumb bondman's cause,
When all that makes the heart sublime,
The glorious throbs that conquer time,
Are traitors to our cruel laws."--LOWELL
The general appearance of the majority of the coloured people in the
streets of Charleston denoted abject fear and timidity, some of them as
I passed looking with servile dread at me (as they did at almost every
one who happened to pass), so that I could read in many of their looks a
suspicion of interference, which, commiserating their condition as I
did, was quite distressing.
It is impossible to form a correct estimate of what the perpetuators of
slavery have to expect, if once the coloured population obtain a
dominant position. The acknowledged gradual depopulation of the whites
in the slave states, through sickness, exhaustion of the land, and
consequent emigration, united with other causes, there is no doubt will
eventually result in a great preponderance of coloured people, who,
aroused by the iniquitous treatment they undergo, will rise under some
resolute leader, and redress their wrongs.
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