Note 38 — Chapter VI · SLAVERY AS A POOR-LAW SYSTEM.

Among the thousands of applicants for soup, and bread, and fuel, as charity, I never saw, during “the famine” in New York, one negro. Five Points Pease said to me, “The negro seems to be more provident than the Celt. The poor blacks always manage to keep themselves more decent and comfortable than the poor whites. They very rarely complain, or ask for charity; and I have often found them sharing their food with white people, who were too poor to provide for themselves.” A great deal of falsehood is circulated and accredited about the sufferings of the free negroes at the North. Their condition is bad enough, but no worse than that of any men educated and treated as they are, must be; and it is, on an average, far better than that of the slave.