2

"Niggers Love Their Masters."

The county of Beaufort, South Carolina, has probably more slaves in it to the square yard than any portion of this free and enlightened country. As the humane, enlightened and enterprising masters have told us very often that the slaves will fight for them rather than "burrow" with the "Lincoln mercenaries," it was natural to suppose that when Old Abe's fleet touched on the coast of New Congo down there, every nigger might be expected to plant himself on the shore to prevent the enemies of his peace from touching the sacred Carolina soil with their abolition feet, and would not depart until — like the great Ohio martyr to niggerism, Vallandigham — the "mercenaries" marched over his dead body. But it don't appear that the Beaufort niggers have thought of it yet. When the masters were making the best of time across the country the gentlemen of color appear to have been ungratefully merry, and having learned that Lincoln's men were abolitionists, they packed up their earthly goods and came to the boats in the expectation that of course the great fleet had come to take them away. Much as such a conclusion will nauseate the civilized stomachs of the Quincy Herald class of editors, we are in consequence forced to assume that slaveholders lie occasionally, and that the slaves are not such everlasting tools as has been represented.

However, easy as it is to overthrow such silly trash as has so long been palmed upon the North, as that slaves will, from choice, light for their masters and against their own freedom, or that the true interests of the nation now require us to uphold slavery, still it is not to be expected that kindred stories will cease to be manufactured. It is as easy for a secession Democrat to lie as it is to "roll off a log." He can put up and prepare for use more articles of this kind in a quarter of an hour than could be met severally and refuted in a year. We must rely upon common sense to do most of the work in refuting such nonsense as that human beings, black or white, prefer slavery to freedom, and will not secure the latter when they can. Common sense may fail when it comes in contact with the craft by which certain men "have their living," but with the masses it may be relied upon to carry us safely through all difficulties.

As for the deluded people of South Carolina, they have incurred a new danger (or rather, have augmented an old one) by bringing an Union army upon their coast. In Beaufort county the proportion of slaves to masters is about 10 to 1, and with the presence of a loyal army so near them, to which they cannot consistently appeal for protection, they have greatly augmented the danger of a Negro insurrection. Already we hear that the negroes of Beaufort are committing excesses in the absence of their "lawful lords;" and that they are likely to become emboldened in their untutored freedom, and to spread the spirit of discontent throughout the back country, is highly probable. If in the course of a few weeks we hear of fearful tragedies raging in South Carolina and Georgia, of bloody excesses by both masters and slaves and some new L'Overture rising up as in St. Domingo, whose name and achievements shall astonish and demoralize the whole rebel Confederacy, there need be no surprise. It will be only the natural result of the insane course that traitors have pursued. They have sown the storm — should they complain when the whirlwind comes?