So was my friend Thomas
Foreman, executor of Governor Troup. My suit was withdrawn; he was
acquitted. I have some crude notions about that thing slavery in the end.
Its tendency, as with landed accumulations in England, or Aaron's rod, is
to swallow up other small rods, and inevitably to attract the benevolence
of the smaller ones. You may have two thousand acres of land in a body.
That is unfeeling--land is. But a body of a thousand negroes appeals to the
finer sentiments of the heart. The agrarian battle is hard to fight. But
'_les amis des noirs_' in our midst have the vantage ground, particularly
when rejected overseers come in as spies. _C'est un peu degoutant, mon cher
ami_; but I can stand the racket."[22]
[Footnote 22: Letter of W.B. Hodgson, Savannah, Ga., June 19, 1859, to J.H.
Hammond. MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress. "Burke"
is the county in which Hodgson's plantation lay.]
The courts exercising jurisdiction over slaves were of two sorts, those of
inferior grade and amateurish character which dealt with them as persons,
and those of superior rank and genuine magisterial quality which handled
them as property and sometimes, on appeal, as persons as well.
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