THE NEGRO IN THE AMERICAN REBELLION, EXCERPT...

"The hostility of the whites and the blacks of the South is easily explained. It has its root and sap in the relation of slavery and was incited on both sides by the cunning of the slave-masters. These masters secured their ascendancy over both the poor whites and the blacks by putting enmity between them. They divided both to conquer each. "There is no earthly reason why the blacks should not hate and dread the poor whites when in a state of slavery; for it was from this class that their masters derived their slave-catchers, slave-drivers, and overseers.They were the men called in upon all occasions by the masters when any fiendish outrage was to be committed upon the slave. "Now, sir [President Andrew Johnson], you cannot but perceive that, the cause of the hatred removed, the effect must be removed also. Slavery is abolished. The cause of antagonism is removed, and you must see that it is altogether illogical-- 'putting new wine into old bottles, mending new garments with old clothes'-- to legislate from slave-holding and slave-driving premises for a people who you have repeatedly declared your purpose to maintain in freedom....Can it be that you would recommend a policy that would arm the strong and cast down the defenseless?... "Experience proves that those are oftenest abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity. Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest. Peace between the races is not to be secured by degrading one race, and exalting another, by giving power to one race and withholding it from another, but by maintaining a state of equal justice between all parties,--first pure then peaceable." p.342-343, THE NEGRO IN THE AMERICAN REBELLION, "President Andrew Johnson," by William Wells Brown (1867)