To make this enmity deep and broad, between the slave and the poor white man, the latter is allowed to abuse and whip the former, without hinderance.

But--as I have suggested--this state of facts prevails _mostly_ in the country.

In the city of Baltimore, there are not unfrequent murmurs, that educating the slaves to be mechanics may, in the end, give slavemasters power to dispense with the services of the poor white man altogether.

But, with characteristic dread of offending the slaveholders, these poor, white mechanics in Mr.Gardiner's ship-yard--instead of applying the natural, honest remedy for the apprehended evil, and objecting at once to work there by the side of slaves--made a cowardly attack upon the free colored mechanics, saying _they_ were eating the bread which should be eaten by American freemen, and swearing that they would not work with them.

The feeling was, _really_, against having their labor brought into competition with that of the colored people at all; but it was too much to strike directly at the interest of the slaveholders; and, therefore proving their servility and cowardice they dealt their blows on the poor, colored freeman, and aimed to prevent _him_ from serving himself, in the evening of life, with the trade{241} with which he had served his master, during the more vigorous portion of his days.