Scarcely any one could live among the better Southern
people without liking them; and few will ever read Hugh Garland's Life
of John Randolph, without more than forgiving all his vagaries,
impetuosities, and foibles. How often, upon riding away from a
Southern home, have we been ready to exclaim, "What a pity such good
people should be so accursed!" Lord Russell well characterized the
evil to which we allude as "that fatal gift of the poisoned garment
which was flung around them from the first hour of their
establishment."
The last act of John Randolph's life, done when he lay dying at a
hotel in Philadelphia, in June, 1833, was to express once more his
sense of this blighting system. Some years before, he had made a will
by which all his slaves were to be freed at his death. He would
probably have given them their freedom before his death, but for the
fact, too evident, that freedom to a black man in a Slave State was
not a boon. The slaves freed by his brother, forty years' before, had
not done well, because (as he supposed) no land had been bequeathed
for their support.
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