Newspapers / The Arator (Raleigh, N.C.) / April 1, 1856, edition 1 / Page 30
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41! TOR ARATOR. before he tras'hanged, but ocular demonstration this day has assured many of us that the murder er's taste has not yet driven that popular delicacy from the tables of the fashionable and refined. Phincas T. Barnnm sometimes makes temperance speeches, but, thank God, his leprous touch of that almost holy cause has not abated the zeal of our noblest men in the great and good work. Negro girls have been the nurses of white children in Virginia since time immemorial, but slave nursing lias not made and never will make it degrading for a mother to foudle and nurse her infant child. A thousand other instances might be mentioned, but these suffice to show that the vilest wretch that crawls upon the earth, cannot make it degrading for an honest man to do what his duty demands, by having done the same thing before him from any motive whatever. Slaves do here what, white menrcallcd free,- flo elsewhere. If it is the color of the hand which degrades the labor, then why is honest labor in as low repute at the north as at the south nay lower, if we may judge from the shifts made to avoid it, as witness wooden nutmegs and deal hams? Will it be said that Jlie slave has made work degrading, because he does it in obedience to the command of a master? Then I say that the whiteslave obeys a master too, and oft-times far harder mas ter than the black one. The northern hireling obeys a master who doles out to him the merest pittance of the fruits of his daily toil, and gives him no love nor sympathy along with it. But obe dience is not degrading. It is the first law of pa rental discipline, social order, religious faith, and everything excellent in heaven and on earth. Obe dience to rightful authority, so far from being de grading, is honorable and ennobling in all the highest positions of life. When an American of ficer in the revolution was commanded to storm Stoney Pointed id he degrade himself by obedience ? Far from it. lie did as he was ordered, and won immoital glory. The highest functionaries of the land find honor in obedience. The slave is not degraded by obeying his master j lie is more of a gentleman, and ought to have more honor and res spect for every act of faithful obedience, than the white citizens of Boston, who disregard the laws of the land, and by daily acts of disobedience vio late the rights of others, and trample honesty, good faith, duty and justice under their feet. No matter what the work may be, it cannot be degrad ing for any man to do it, when duty commands, and this whether it is.usual to be done by freemen or bv.1- ica. If an- Had of work ia desrradicsr. I would take shoe blacking to be so. But a high dignatary in one of the Virginia churches told me some years ago, that he once chanced to' visit the bishop of a northern State, a man of learning, wisdom and exalted piety, who kept no man Ser vant. The gentleman tarried all night, and when he looked out from his window in the morning he beheld the venerable bishop seated on the steps below blacking his own and his guest's shoes. Since holy bishops hafe blacked boots and IJpam inondas swept the streets! think the degradation of any kind of work by slave labor may be set down as an antique myth of northern ism. Mischievous as have been the effects of the per uicious notion that slavery degrades labor, I think that even worse evil has come from 1 he farmer of Virginia mistaking what his true work is. It is not the doing of. any kind of work indifferently, that declares a man's" dignity and wins the re gards of heaven on all his ways :" But it is doing h:3 " appointed work." A man may degrade him self almost as much, by u J: ; work, as by doing none. Now the work 04 ; . cr ofyir "inia is an intellectual, not a bodil v n,.:d, it is because intellectual labor is much i.h . uh . . ... - : . . .. t f , i . L" ' n . J m .-i. m- a ,- t 4 4 4 I tT f 3 4 1 f t .- , 4 ' chosen to mistake our true Work, and toil with ,. hands more than with our heads. . It is true that in some regions of Virgiuia, asiij generally the case at the north, the husbandman must be, to a considerable extent, his own labor er. In all such case's bodily work is the " farmer's appointed worK," ana lie uuus nonor as wen as. profit in doin: it faithfully. But in most parts of this State the farms are large, and the slaves nu merous, and on them the master's work is to know rather than to do to order, direct, 'control, plan and supervise all the complicated operations of the farm, with superior wisdom and knowledge, and not to labor with the hoc and plow. This is a work of the mind, requiring much study, deep thought and profound science. It is a hard and responsible work, and even wise men shrink from responsibility j hence ccmics it that the high intel lectual calling of the Southern farmer is much too often relinquished for the easier and less responsi ble work of the body. Unfortunately for agriculture progress our youth commence farming generally with very imperfect training for the business, and with very vague no tions of what a farmer's occupation in Virginia ought to be, which almost compels them to get their head work done second hand by neighbors s.ar.d oveweers rr ignorant acd.igjfi interested than
The Arator (Raleigh, N.C.)
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April 1, 1856, edition 1
30
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