They are Native
Americans by birth and blood, and we have no right to dispossess
them by law of what we have given them by blood. We destroy their
feelings by despoiling them of their rights, and by it we weaken our
own cause. Give them the same rights and privileges that we extend
to that miserable class of foreigners who are spreading pestilence
and death over our social institutions, and we would have nothing to
fear from them, but rather find them our strongest protectors. I
want to see a law taking from that class of men the power to lord it
over and abuse them."
A friend, who has resided several years in Charleston, strong in his
feelings of Southern rights, and whose keen observation could not
fail to detect the working of different phases of the slave
institution, informed us that he had conversed with a great many
very intelligent and enterprising men belonging to that large class
of "bright" men in Charleston, and that which appeared to pain them
most was the manner they were treated by foreigners of the lowest
class; that rights which they had inherited by birth and blood were
taken away from them; that, being subjected to the same law which
governed the most abject slave, every construction of it went to
degrade them, while it gave supreme power to the most degraded white
to impose upon them, and exercise his vindictive feelings toward
them; that no consideration being given to circumstances, the least
deviation from the police regulations made to govern negroes, was
taken advantage of by the petty guardmen, who either extorted a fee
to release them, or dragged them to the police-office, where their
oath was nothing, even if supported by testimony of their own color;
but the guardman's word was taken as positive proof.
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