The Future of the Colored Race in America

There are, with very rare exceptions throughout the whole South, but two classes--free and slave, or we may say, slave-holders and slaves, for the non slave-holders are completely lost and absorbed in the all-controlling element which is above them; they work in with it, and are indeed a part of it. As slavery called this aristocracy into being, and created its power, so it holds it in being; anything which strikes at slavery strikes at the root of this power; to destroy slavery would be to blot it out of existence.