Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly • Paragraph 263
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Abolitionists make a great noise about slavery, some of them, no doubt, conscientious and sincere; but there are many among them, should they remove to the South, that would in less than five years own a cotton farm or a sugar plantation well stocked with negroes. Facts have in many instances verified the truth of this assertion. Men have frequently emigrated from the free states to the South, professedly abolitionists, and after getting into one or two difficulties with the excitable Southerners, they would all at once throw off their garb of abolitionism, and then, they too, must have slaves. Perhaps they thought that a change of location justified a change of opinion; or, it may be, that they reasoned thus: poor creatures, they are in bondage, and why should they not as well belong to us as to any one else? We can treat them as well as any one. The Southern slaves, however, tell a different tale. They say that Northern men have no business with slaves, for the reason, that they are very hard masters. The negroes of the South have as little sympathy for the Yankees, as their pro-slavery masters.