Many white men made it their
business to dispose of property stolen by Negroes.
In the strait in which most slaves were, they had to lie for
protection. Living in an environment where the actions of almost any
colored man were suspected as insurrectionary, Negroes were frequently
called upon to tell what they knew and were sometimes forced to say
what they did not know. Furthermore, to prevent the slaves from
cooeperating to rise against their masters, they were often taught to
mistreat and malign each other to keep alive a feeling of hatred. The
bad traits of the American Negroes resulted then not from an instinct
common to the natives of Africa, but from the institutions of the
South and from the actual teaching of the slaves to be low and
depraved that they might never develop sufficient strength to become a
powerful element in society.
As this system operated to make the Negroes either nominal Christians
or heathen, the anti-slavery men could not be silent.[1] James G.
Birney said that the slaveholding churches like indifferent observers,
had watched the abasement of the Negroes to a plane of beasts without
remonstrating with legislatures against the iniquitous measures.
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