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Pilbeam's Mechanical Ventilation

Physiological and Clinical

Applications

SEVENTH EDITION

J.M. Cairo, PhD, RRT, FAARC

Dean of the School of Allied Health Professions, Professor of
Cardiopulmonary Science, Physiology, and Anesthesiology, Louisiana State
University Health Sciences Center, New Orleans, Louisiana
Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Contributors

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Basic Terms and Concepts of Mechanical Ventilation

Physiological Terms and Concepts Related to Mechanical

Ventilation

Normal Mechanics of Spontaneous Ventilation

Lung Characteristics
 Time Constants

Types of Ventilators and Terms Used in Mechanical Ventilation

Types of Mechanical Ventilation

Definition of Pressures in Positive Pressure Ventilation

Summary

Chapter 2. How Ventilators Work

Historical Perspective on Ventilator Classification

Internal Function

Power Source or Input Power

Control Systems and Circuits

Power Transmission and Conversion System

Summary

Chapter 3. How a Breath Is Delivered

Basic Model of Ventilation in the Lung During Inspiration

Factors Controlled and Measured During Inspiration

Overview of Inspiratory Waveform Control

Phases of a Breath and Phase Variables

Types of Breaths

Summary
Chapter 4. Establishing the Need for Mechanical Ventilation

Acute Respiratory Failure

Patient History and Diagnosis

Physiological Measurements in Acute Respiratory Failure

Overview of Criteria for Mechanical Ventilation

Possible Alternatives to Invasive Ventilation

Summary

Chapter 5. Selecting the Ventilator and the Mode

Noninvasive and Invasive Positive Pressure Ventilation: Selecting

The Patient Interface

Full and Partial Ventilatory Support

Breath Delivery and Modes of Ventilation

Modes of Ventilation

Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure

Additional Modes of Ventilation

Summary

Chapter 6. Initial Ventilator Settings

Determining Initial Ventilator Settings During Volume-Controlled

Ventilation

Initial Settings During Volume-Controlled Ventilation

 Setting The Minute Ventilation: Special Considerations

Inspiratory Pause During Volume Ventilation

Determining Initial Ventilator Settings During Pressure Ventilation

Setting Baseline Pressure: Physiological Positive End-Expiratory

Pressure

Summary

Chapter 7. Final Considerations in Ventilator Setup

Selection of Additional Parameters and Final Ventilator Setup

Sensitivity Setting

Alarms

Periodic Hyperinflation or Sighing

Final Considerations In Ventilator Equipment Setup

Selecting the Appropriate Ventilator

Evaluation of Ventilator Performance

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Asthma

Neuromuscular Disorders

Closed Head Injury

Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

Acute Cardiogenic Pulmonary Edema and Congestive Heart

 Failure

Summary

Chapter 8. Initial Patient Assessment

Documentation of The Patient–Ventilator System

The First 30 Minutes

Monitoring Airway Pressures

Vital Signs, Blood Pressure, and Physical Examination of The

Chest

Management of Endotracheal Tube and Tracheostomy Tube

Cuffs

Monitoring Compliance and Airway Resistance

Comment Section of The Ventilator Flow Sheet

Summary

Chapter 9. Ventilator Graphics

Relationship of Flow, Pressure, Volume, and Time

A Closer Look at Scalars, Curves, and Loops

Using Graphics to Monitor Pulmonary Mechanics

Assessing Patient–Ventilator Asynchrony

Advanced Applications

Summary
Chapter 10. Assessment of Respiratory Function

Noninvasive Measurements of Blood Gases

Capnography (Capnometry)

Exhaled Nitric Oxide Monitoring

Transcutaneous Monitoring

Indirect Calorimetry and Metabolic Measurements

Assessment of Respiratory System Mechanics

Measurements

Summary

Chapter 11. Hemodynamic Monitoring

Review of Cardiovascular Principles

Obtaining Hemodynamic Measurements

Interpretation of Hemodynamic Profiles

Clinical Applications

Summary

Chapter 12. Methods to Improve Ventilation in Patient–Ventilator

Management

Correcting Ventilation Abnormalities

Common Methods of Changing Ventilation Based on Paco2 and

Ph
 Airway Clearance During Mechanical Ventilation

Secretion Clearance From an Artificial Airway

Administering Aerosols to Ventilated Patients

Types of Aerosol-Generating Devices

Postural Drainage and Chest Percussion

Flexible Fiberoptic Bronchoscopy

Additional Patient Management Techniques and Therapies in

Ventilated Patients

Fluid Balance

Psychological and Sleep Status

Patient Safety and Comfort

Transport of Mechanically Ventilated Patients Within an Acute

Care Facility

Summary

Chapter 13. Improving Oxygenation and Management of Acute

Respiratory Distress Syndrome

Basics of Oxygenation Using FIO2, PEEP Studies, and Pressure–

Volume Curves for Establishing Optimal PEEP

Introduction to Positive End-Expiratory Pressure and Continuous

Positive Airway Pressure

Peep Ranges
Indications for PEEP and CPAP

Initiating PEEP Therapy

Selecting The Appropriate PEEP/CPAP Level (Optimal PEEP)

Use of Pulmonary Vascular Pressure Monitoring with PEEP

Contraindications and Physiological Effects of PEEP

Weaning from PEEP

Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

Pathophysiology

Changes in Computed Tomogram with ARDS

ARDS as an Inflammatory Process

PEEP and the Vertical Gradient in ARDS

Lung-Protective Strategies: Setting Tidal Volume and Pressures

in ARDS

Long-Term Follow-Up on ARDS

Pressure–Volume Loops and Recruitment Maneuvers in Setting

PEEP in ARDS

Summary of Recruitment Maneuvers in ARDS

The Importance of Body Position During Positive Pressure

Ventilation

Additional Patient Cases

Summary
Chapter 14. Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia

Epidemiology

Pathogenesis of Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia

Diagnosis of Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia

Treatment of Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia

Strategies to Prevent Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia

Summary

Chapter 15. Sedatives, Analgesics, and Paralytics

Sedatives and Analgesics

Summary

Chapter 16. Extrapulmonary Effects of Mechanical Ventilation

Effects of Positive Pressure Ventilation on the Heart and Thoracic

Vessels

Adverse Cardiovascular Effects of Positive Pressure Ventilation

Factors Influencing Cardiovascular Effects of Positive Pressure

Ventilation

Beneficial Effects of Positive Pressure Ventilation on Heart

Function in Patients With Left Ventricular Dysfunction

Minimizing the Physiological Effects and Complications of

Mechanical Ventilation
 Effects of Mechanical Ventilation on Intracranial Pressure, Renal
Function, Liver Function, and Gastrointestinal Function

Renal Effects of Mechanical Ventilation

Effects of Mechanical Ventilation on Liver and Gastrointestinal

Function

Nutritional Complications During Mechanical Ventilation

Summary

Chapter 17. Effects of Positive Pressure Ventilation on the Pulmonary

System

Lung Injury With Mechanical Ventilation

Effects of Mechanical Ventilation on Gas Distribution and

Pulmonary Blood Flow

Respiratory and Metabolic Acid–Base Status in Mechanical

Ventilation

Air Trapping (Auto-PEEP)

Hazards of Oxygen Therapy With Mechanical Ventilation

Increased Work of Breathing

Ventilator Mechanical and Operational Hazards

Complications of the Artificial Airway

Summary

Chapter 18. Troubleshooting and Problem Solving

 Definition of the Term Problem

Protecting the Patient

Identifying the Patient in Sudden Distress

Patient-Related Problems

Ventilator-Related Problems

Common Alarm Situations

Use of Graphics to Identify Ventilator Problems

Unexpected Ventilator Responses

Summary

Chapter 19. Basic Concepts of Noninvasive Positive Pressure

Ventilation

Types of Noninvasive Ventilation Techniques

Goals of and Indications for Noninvasive Positive Pressure

Ventilation

Other Indications for Noninvasive Ventilation

Patient Selection Criteria

Equipment Selection for Noninvasive Ventilation

Setup and Preparation for Noninvasive Ventilation

Monitoring and Adjustment of Noninvasive Ventilation

Aerosol Delivery in Noninvasive Ventilation

 Complications of Noninvasive Ventilation

Discontinuing Noninvasive Ventilation

Patient Care Team Concerns

Summary

Chapter 20. Weaning and Discontinuation From Mechanical

Ventilation

Weaning Techniques

Methods of Titrating Ventilator Support During Weaning

Closed-Loop Control Modes for Ventilator Discontinuation

Evidence-Based Weaning

Evaluation of Clinical Criteria for Weaning

Recommendation 1: Pathology of Ventilator Dependence

Recommendation 2: Assessment of Readiness for Weaning

Using Evaluation Criteria

Recommendation 3: Assessment During a Spontaneous

Breathing Trial

Recommendation 4: Removal of the Artificial Airway

Factors in Weaning Failure

Nonrespiratory Factors that may Complicate Weaning

Recommendation 6: Maintaining Ventilation in Patients with

Spontaneous Breathing Trial Failure
 Final Recommendations

Recommendation 8: Weaning Protocols

Recommendation 9: Role of Tracheostomy in Weaning

Recommendation 10: Long-Term Care Facilities for Patients

Requiring Prolonged Ventilation

Recommendation 11: Clinician Familiarity with Long-Term Care

Facilities

Recommendation 12: Weaning in Long-Term Ventilation Units

Ethical Dilemma: Withholding and Withdrawing Ventilatory

Support

Summary

Chapter 21. Long-Term Ventilation

Goals of Long-Term Mechanical Ventilation

Sites for Ventilator-Dependent Patients

Patient Selection

Preparation for Discharge to The Home

Follow-Up and Evaluation

Equipment Selection for Home Ventilation

Complications of Long-Term Positive Pressure Ventilation

Alternatives to Invasive Mechanical Ventilation at Home

Expiratory Muscle AIDS and Secretion Clearance

Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 breakfast and horse-feed.’ At the end of every page or two
our tourist repeats these growlings over the enormous
exactions. It is the refrain from one cover of the book to
the other. What a series of martyrdoms. Could such a
journey by any possibility be made ‘to pay?’ Perhaps,
friend traveller, you have heard of the lavish hospitality of
the South, and imagined that people there moved out
upon the high road for the sole purpose of sharing the
society which gentlemen, like yourself, could furnish,
believing every arrival to be an act of special providence!
When you offered to pay the woman on Red River, and
‘feared she was offended by your offering her money for
her hospitality,’ you paid the highest compliment to the
South; for heaven knows you would have had no such
apprehension on the banks of the Connecticut.”
I cannot but be gratified that so much importance should have been
attached to my earlier volumes as to induce the Superintendent of
the Census to devote to their consideration a leading article in the
first economico-political review of the country; and I can feel nothing
but regret that he should be obliged to attribute to an unworthy
motive even those of my labours the result of which he does me the
honour to designate as valuable and trustworthy. I have often had
occasion to refer to Mr. De Bow, and, I believe, have always done so
in a manner consistent with the respect which I feel for the class of
men among whom he has had the honourable ambition to rank
himself. That a man, while occupying a position which properly
belongs to the most able and just-minded statistician in the country,
should think it proper to write under his own name in the manner of
which the above extracts are a sample, about a work which assumes
to relate calmly and methodically, the result of a personal study of
the condition of the people of a certain State, is a note-worthy
circumstance in illustration of the present political history of our
country. I cite them now, however, chiefly to show what need there
is for a discussion upon which I propose to enter, myself, little
further than is necessary to enable me to clearly set forth certain
facts in their more important significance, the right of publishing
which can hardly be denied me, in view of the insinuations made by
Mr. De Bow, who in this follows what has got to be a general custom
of Southern reviewers and journalists towards travellers with whose
expressed judgments upon any matter observed within the slave
States they differ. There are numerous homes in the South the
memory of which I cherish tenderly. There are numbers of men in
the South for whom I have a warm admiration, to whom I feel
grateful, whose respect I wish not to lose. There are others for
whom I have a quite different feeling. Of a single individual of
neither class have I spoken in these two volumes, I believe, by his
true name, or in such a manner that he could be recognized, or his
home pointed out by any one who had not been previously familiar
with it and with him, being, as a rule, careful to so far differ from the
actual order of the events of my journey in narrating them, that
facts of private life could not be readily localized. From this rule I do
not intend now to depart further than is necessary to exhibit the
whole truth of the facts to which I have referred, but since the
charge of ingratitude and indelicacy is publicly made against me, as
it has frequently been of late against better men on similar grounds,
I propose to examine those grounds in the light of certain actual
experiences of myself and others, and let it be judged whether there
must always exist a peculiar moral obligation upon travellers to be
mealy-mouthed as to the habits of the people of the South, either on
account of hospitality or in reciprocation of the delicate reserve
which, from the tenor of Mr. De Bow’s remarks, it might be supposed
was habitually exercised in the South with regard to the habits of
their own people. These experiences shall be both special and
general. What immediately follows is of the former class, but, in the
end, it will be found to have a general significance.
On a hot morning in July a Northern traveller left the town of
Lynchburg, the chief market-town of Virginia tobacco, and rode
eastwardly towards Farmville. Suddenly taken severely ill, and no
house being in sight, he turned from the road into the shade of the
wood, dismounted, reclined against a sturdy trunk, took an anodyne,
which he fortunately had with him, and at length found relief in
sleep. Late in the day he awoke, somewhat recovered, but with a
sharp headache and much debilitated. He managed, however, to
mount, and rode slowly on to find a shelter for the night. In half an
hour the welcome sight of an old plantation mansion greeted his
eyes. There was a large court, with shade trees and shrubbery
between the road and the house, and in the corner of this court,
facing the road, a small warehouse or barn, in and around which
were a number of negroes moving casks of tobacco. A white man,
evidently their owner, was superintending their labour, and to him
the traveller applied for lodging for the night.
“We don’t take in strangers.”
The traveller informed the planter of his illness and inability to ride
further.
“You’ll have to try to ride as far as the next house, sir; we don’t take
in travellers here,” was the reply.
“Really I don’t feel able. I should not like to put you to
inconvenience, sir, but I am weak and faint. My horse, too, has
eaten nothing since early in the morning.”
“Sorry for you, but we have no accommodation for travellers here,”
was the only reply, and the planter stepped to the other side of a
tobacco cask.
The traveller rode on. About half an hour afterwards he came in
sight of another house. It was at a distance from the road, and to
reach it he was obliged to let down and put up again three different
sets of fence-bars. The owner was not at home, and his wife said
that they were not accustomed to take in strangers. “It was not far
to the next house,” she added, as the traveller hesitated.
He reached, at length, the next house, which proved to be the
residence of another large tobacco planter, who sat smoking in its
verandah, as the traveller rode near and made his petition.
“We don’t take in travellers,” was again his answer.
The sick man stated his special claims to kindness, and the planter
good-naturedly inquired the particulars, asked how far he had
ridden, where he got his horse and his dog, whither he was bound,
and so on (did not ask where he was born or what were his politics).
The traveller again stated that he was ill, unable to ride further, and
begged permission to remain for the night under the planter’s roof,
and again the planter carelessly replied that they didn’t take in
travellers; anon, asked how crops were looking further west, and
talked of guano, the war news, and the prospect for peaches. It
became dusk while the traveller lingered, and the negroes came in
with their hoes over their shoulders from the fields across the road,
but the planter continued chatting and smoking, not even offering
the traveller a cigar, till at length the latter said, “If you really cannot
keep me to-night, I must go on, sir; I cannot keep my horse much
longer, I fear.”
“It is not far to the next house.”
“But I have already called at three houses to-night, sir.”
“Well, you see, since the railroad was done, people here don’t
reckon to take in travellers as they once did. So few come along they
don’t find their account in being ready for them.”
The traveller asked for a drink of water, which a negro brought in a
calabash, bade good night to the planter, and rode on through the
woods. Night presently set in; the road crossed a swamp and was
difficult to follow, and for more than an hour he rode on—seeing no
house—without stopping. Then crossing water, he deliberated
whether he should not bivouac for the night where he was. He had
with him a few biscuits and some dried figs. He had not eaten
hitherto, hoping constantly to come to a habitation where it might
happen he could get a cup of tea, of which he felt more particularly
in need. He stopped, took some nourishment, the first he had tasted
in fifteen hours, and taking also a little brandy, gained strength and
courage to continue his journey. A bright light soon cheered him,
and after a time he made his way to a large white house, in the rear
of which was an old negro woman stirring the contents of a caldron
which stood over the fire, by which he had been guided. The old
woman had the appearance of a house servant, and he requested
her to ask her master if he would favour him with lodging for the
night.
“Her master did not take in travellers,” she said, “besides, he was
gone to bed;” and she stirred on, hardly looking at the traveller till
he put his hand in his pocket, and, holding forth silver, said—
“Now, aunty, mind what I tell you. Do you go in to your master, and
say to him, ‘There is a gentleman outside who says he is sick, and
that his horse is tired and has had nothing to eat to-day; that he is a
stranger and has been benighted, don’t know the roads, is not well
enough to ride further, and wants to know if you won’t be so kind as
to let him stay here to-night.’”
“Yes, massa, I’ll tell him; ’twon’t do no good, though, and he’ll be
almighty cross.”
She went in, returned after a few minutes, seized her paddle, and
began stirring before she uttered the words—
“Says yer ken go on to de store, he reckon.”
It was after ten o’clock when the traveller reached the next house. It
stood close upon the road, and the voice of a woman answered a
knock upon the door, and, in reply to the demand, said it was not far
to the store, and she reckoned they accommodated travellers there.
Finally, at the store, the traveller succeeded in getting admittance,
was comfortably lodged and well entertained by an amiable family.
Their kindness was of such a character that he felt, in the position of
an invited guest, unable to demand and unwilling to suggest any
unvolunteered service. There was no indication that the house was
an inn, yet the traveller’s experience left him little room to hesitate
to offer money, nor was there the slightest hesitation on the part of
the storekeeper in naming the amount due for the entertainment he
had, or in taking it.
If the reader will accept the traveller’s judgment of himself, he will
assume that there was nothing in his countenance, his dress, his
language, or his bearing, by which he could readily be distinguished
from a gentleman of Southern birth and education, and that he was
not imagined to be anything else, certainly not on his first inquiry, at
any one of the plantations where he was thus refused shelter.
So far as this inhospitality (for this is, I think, what even the
Southern reader will be inclined to call it) needed explanation, it was
supposed to be sufficiently given in the fact that the region had, by
the recent construction of a railroad through it, approximated the
condition of a well-settled and organized community, in which the
movements of travellers are so systematized, that the business of
providing for their wants, as a matter of pecuniary profit, can no
longer be made a mere supplement of another business, but
becomes a distinct occupation.
This, then, but a small part of the whole land being thus affected by
railroads, was an exception in the South. True; but what is the rule
to which this is the exception?
Mr. De Bow says, that the traveller would have had no apprehension
that the offer of money for chance entertainment for the night
furnished him at a house on the banks of the Connecticut, would
give offence; yet in the Connecticut valley, among people having no
servants, and not a tithe of the nominal wealth of the Red River
planter, or of one of these Virginia planters, such has been a
frequent experience of the same traveller. Nor has he ever, when
calling benighted at a house, anywhere in the State of Connecticut,
far from a public-house, escaped being invited with cordial frankness
to enjoy such accommodation as it afforded; and this, he is fully
convinced, without any thought in the majority of cases of pecuniary
remuneration. In several instances a remuneration in money has
been refused in a manner which conveyed a reproof of the offer of it
as indelicate; and it thus happens that it was a common experience
of that, of the possibility of which Mr. De Bow is unable to conceive,
that led in no small degree to the hesitation upon which this very
comment was made.
This simple faith in the meanness of the people of the North, and
especially of New England, is no eccentricity of Mr. De Bow’s. It is in
accordance with the general tone of literature and of conversation at
the South, that penuriousness, disingenuousness, knavish cunning,
cant, cowardice, and hypocrisy are assumed to be the prevailing
traits by which they are distinguished from the people of the South—
not the poor people of New England from the planters of the South,
but the people generally from the people generally. Not the tone of
the political literature and of the lower class of the South, but of its
wealthy class, very generally, really of its “better class.” Mr. De Bow
is himself the associate of gentlemen as well informed and as free
from narrow prejudices as any at the South. No New England man,
who has travelled at the South, would be surprised, indeed, if, at a
table at which he were a guest, such an assumption as that of Mr.
De Bow should be apparent in all the conversation, and that the gist
of it should be supposed to be so well understood and generally
conceded, that he could not be annoyed thereat.
I need hardly say that this reference to Mr. De Bow is continued, not
for the purpose of vindicating the North any more than myself from
a mistaken criticism. I wish only to demonstrate how necessary it
must soon be to find other means for saving the Union than these
commonplace flatteries of Southern conceit and apologies for
Southern folly, to which we have not only become so accustomed
ourselves, as to hardly believe our eyes when we are obliged to
meet the facts (as was my own case), but by which we have so
successfully imposed upon our friends, that a man like Mr. De Bow
actually supposes that the common planters of the teeming and
sunny South, are, as a rule, a more open-handed, liberal, and
hospitable class than the hard-working farmers of the bleak and
sterile hills of New England; so much so, that he feels warranted not
merely in stating facts within his personal knowledge, illustrating the
character of the latter and arguing the causes, but in incidentally
referring to their penuriousness as a matter of proverbial contempt.
Against this mistake, which, I doubt not, is accomplishing constant
mischief to our nation, I merely oppose the facts of actual
experience. I wish to do so with true respect for the good sense of
the South.

Presenting myself, and known only in the character of a chance

traveller, most likely to be in search of health, entertainment, and
information; usually taken for and treated as a Southerner, until I
stated that I was not one, I journeyed nearly six months at one time
(my second journey) through the South. During all this journey, I
came not oftener than once a week, on an average, to public-
houses, and was thus generally forced to seek lodging and
sustenance at private houses. Often it was refused me; not
unfrequently rudely refused. But once did I meet with what Northern
readers could suppose Mr. De Bow to mean by the term (used in the
same article), “free road-side hospitality.” Not once with the slightest
appearance of what Noah Webster defines hospitality—the “practice
of receiving or entertaining strangers without reward.”
Only twice, in a journey of four thousand miles, made independently
of public conveyances, did I receive a night’s lodging or a repast
from a native Southerner, without having the exact price in money
which I was expected to pay for it stated to me by those at whose
hands I received it.

If what I have just narrated had been reported to me before I

travelled in the manner I did in my second journey at the South, I
should have had serious doubts of either the honesty or the sanity of
the reporter. I know, therefore, to what I subject myself in now
giving my own name to it. I could not but hesitate to do this, as one
would be cautious in acknowledging that he believed himself to have
seen the sea-serpent, or had discovered a new motive power. By
drawing out the confidence of other travellers, who had chanced to
move through the South in a manner at all similar, however, I have
had the satisfaction of finding that I am not altogether solitary in my
experience. Even this day I met one fresh from the South-west, to
whom, after due approach, I gave the article which is the text of
these observations, asking to be told how he had found it in New
England and in Mississippi. He replied.
“During four winters, I have travelled for a business
purpose two months each winter in Mississippi. I have
generally spent the night at houses with whose inmates I
had some previous acquaintance. Where I had business
transactions, especially where debts were due to me,
which could not be paid, I sometimes neglected to offer
payment for my night’s lodging, but in no other case, and
never in a single instance, so far as I can now recollect,
where I had offered payment, has there been any
hesitation in taking it. A planter might refrain from asking
payment of a traveller, but it is universally expected. In
New England, as far as my limited experience goes, it is
not so. I have known New England farmers’ wives take a
small gratuity after lodging travellers, but always with
apparent hesitation. I have known New England farmers
refuse to do so. I have had some experience in Iowa;
money is there usually (not always) taken for lodging
travellers. The principal difference between the custom at
private houses there and in Alabama and Mississippi
being, that in Iowa the farmer seems to carefully reckon
the exact value of the produce you have consumed, and
to charge for it at what has often seemed to me an
absurdly low rate; while in Mississippi, I have usually paid
from four to six times as much as in Iowa, for similar
accommodations. I consider the usual charges of planters
to travellers extortionate, and the custom the reverse of
hospitable. I knew of a Kentucky gentleman travelling
 from Eutaw to Greensboro’ [twenty miles] in his own
conveyance. He was taken sick at the crossing of the
Warrior River. It was nine o’clock at night. He averred to
me that he called at every plantation on the road, and
stated that he was a Kentuckian, and sick, but was
refused lodging at each of them.”
This the richest county of Alabama, and the road is lined with
valuable plantations!
The following is an extract from a letter dated Columbus, Mississippi,
November 24, 1856, published in the London Daily News. It is
written by an Englishman travelling for commercial purposes, and
tells what he has learned by experience of the custom of the
country:
“It is customary in travelling through this country, where
towns are few and taverns scarce and vile, to stop at the
planters’ houses along the road, and pay for your bed and
board in the morning just as if you had stayed at an inn.
The custom is rather repugnant to our Old World notions
of hospitality, but it appears to me an excellent one for
both the host and his guest. The one feels less bored by
demands upon his kindness, as soon as it ceases to be
merely a kindness to comply with them, and the other has
no fear about intruding or being troublesome when he
knows he will have to pay for his entertainment. It is
rarely, however, that the entrée can be obtained into the
houses of wealthy planters in this way. They will not be
bothered by your visits, and, if you apply to them, have no
hesitation in politely passing you on to such of their
neighbours as have less money or more generosity.”
The same writer afterwards relates the following experience:—
“About nineteen miles from Canton, I sought lodging at
nightfall at a snug house on the roadside, inhabited by an
old gentleman and his two daughters, who possessed no
 slaves and grew no cotton, and whose two sons had been
killed in the Mexican war, and who, with the loudest
professions of hospitality, cautiously refrained from giving
himself any personal trouble in support of them. He
informed me that there was corn in the husk in an almost
inaccessible loft, there was fodder in an un-get-at-able
sort of a cage in the yard, water in a certain pond about
half a mile off, and a currycomb in a certain hole in the
wall. Having furnished me with this intelligence, he left me
to draw my own conclusions as to what my conduct ought
to be under the circumstances.”
A naturalist, the author of a well-known standard work, who has
made several tours of observation in the Slave States, lately confided
to me that he believed that the popular report of Southern
hospitality must be a popular romance, for never, during all his
travels in the South, had he chanced to be entertained for a single
night, except by gentlemen to whom he was formally presented by
letter, or who had previously been under obligations to him, without
paying for it in money, and to an amount quite equal to the value
received. By the wealthier, a night’s entertainment had been
frequently refused him, under circumstances which, as must have
been evident to them, rendered his further progress seriously
inconvenient. Once, while in company with a foreign naturalist—a
titled man—he had been dining at the inn of a small county-town,
when a certain locally distinguished judge had seen fit to be
eloquent at the dinner-table upon the advantages of slavery in
maintaining a class of “high-toned gentlemen,” referring especially to
the proverbial hospitality of Southern plantations, which he
described as quite a bewilderment to strangers, and nothing like
which was to be found in any country unblessed with slavery, or
institutions equivalent to it. It so happened that the following night
the travellers, on approaching a plantation mansion in quest of
lodging, were surprised to find that they had fallen upon the
residence of this same judge, who recognized them, and welcomed
them and bade them be at home. Embarrassed by a recollection of
his discourse of hospitality, it was with some difficulty that one of
them, when they were taking leave next morning, brought himself to
inquire what he might pay for the entertainment they had received.
He was at once relieved by the judge’s prompt response, “Dollar and
a quarter apiece, I reckon.”
It is very true that the general custom of the South which leads a
traveller to ask for a lodging at any private house he may chance to
reach near nightfall, and to receive a favourable answer not merely
as a favour but as a matter of business, is a convenient one, is one
indeed almost necessary in a country so destitute of villages, and
where, off certain thoroughfares of our merchants, there are so few
travellers. It is a perfectly respectable and entirely sensible custom,
but it is not, as is commonly represented to be, a custom of
hospitality, and it is not at all calculated to induce customs of
hospitality with the mass of citizens. It is calculated to make
inhospitality of habit and inhospitality of character the general rule;
hospitality of habit and of character the exception. Yet the common
misapplication of the word to this custom is, so far as I can
ascertain, the only foundation of the arrogant assumption of
superiority of character in this respect of the Southerners over
ourselves—the only ground of the claim that slavery breeds a race of
more generous and hospitable citizens than freedom.

The difficulty of giving anything like an intelligent and exact estimate

of the breeding of any people or of any class of people is almost
insurmountable, owing to the vagueness of the terms which must be
used, or rather to the quite different ideas which different readers
will attach to these terms. The very word which I have employed to
designate my present subject has itself such a varied signification
that it needs to be defined at the outset. I mean to employ it in that
sense wherein, according to Webster, it covers the ground of
“nurture, instruction, and the formation of manners.” It is something
more than “manners and customs,” then, and includes, or may
include, qualities which, if not congenital, are equally an essential
part of character with those qualities which are literally in-bred of a
man. Such qualities are mainly the result of a class of circumstances,
of the influence of which upon his character and manners a man, or
a child growing to a man, is usually unconscious, and of which he
cannot be independent if he would.
The general difficulty is increased in dealing with the people of the
Slave States, because among themselves all terms defining social
rank and social characteristics are applied in a manner which can be
understood only after considerable experience; and also because the
general terms of classification, always incomplete in their
significance, fail entirely with a large class of Southerners, whose
manners have some characteristics which would elsewhere be
thought “high bred,” if they had not other which are elsewhere
universally esteemed low and ruffianly.
There are undoubted advantages resulting from the effects of
slavery upon the manners of some persons. Somewhat similar
advantages I have thought that I perceived to have resulted in the
Free States, where a family has been educated under favourable
influences in a frontier community. There is boldness, directness,
largeness, confidence, with the effect of the habitual sense of
superiority to most of the community; not superiority of wealth, and
power from wealth merely, but of a mind well stocked and refined by
such advantages of education as only very unusual wealth, or very
unusual individual energy, rightly directed, can procure in a scattered
and frontier community. When to this is added the effect of visits to
the cultivated society of denser communities; when refined and
polished manners are grafted on a natural, easy abandon; when
there is high culture without effeminacy either of body or mind, as
not unfrequently happens, we find a peculiarly respectable and
agreeable sort of men and women. They are the result of frontier
training under the most favourable circumstances. In the class
furthest removed from this on the frontier—people who have grown
up without civilized social restraints or encouragements and always
under what in a well-conditioned community would be esteemed
great privations—happens, on the other hand, the most disagreeable
specimen of mankind that the world breeds; men of a sort almost
peculiar to America and Australia; border ruffians, of whom the
“rowdies” of our eastern towns are tame reflections. Cooper has well
described the first class in many instances. I know of no picture of
the latter which represents them as detestable as I have found
them.
The whole South is maintained in a frontier condition by the system
which is apologized for on the ground that it favours good breeding.
This system, at the same time, tends to concentrate wealth in a few
hands. If there is wisdom and great care in the education of a family
thus favoured, the result which we see at the North, under the
circumstances I have described, is frequently reproduced. There are
many more such fruits of frontier life at the South than the North,
because there is more frontier life. There is also vastly more of the
other sort, and there is everything between, which degrees of
wealth and degrees of good fortune in education would be expected
to occasion. The bad breed of the frontier, at the South, however, is
probably far worse than that of the North, because the frontier
condition of the South is everywhere permanent. The child born to-
day on the Northern frontier, in most cases, before it is ten years
old, will be living in a well organized and tolerably well provided
community; schools, churches, libraries, lecture and concert halls,
daily mails and printing presses, shops and machines in variety,
having arrived within at least a day’s journey of it; being always
within an influencing distance of it. There are improvements, and
communities loosely and gradually cohering in various parts of the
South, but so slowly, so feebly, so irregularly, that men’s minds and
habits are knit firm quite independently of this class of social
influences.
There is one other characteristic of the Southerner, which is far more
decided than the difference of climate merely would warrant, and
which is to be attributed not only to the absence of the ordinary
restraints and means of discipline of more compact communities in
his education, but unquestionably also to the readiness and safety
with which, by reason of slavery, certain passions and impulses may
be indulged. Every white Southerner is a person of importance; must
be treated with deference. Every wish of the Southerner is
imperative; every belief undoubted; every hate, vengeful; every
love, fiery. Hence, for instance, the scandalous fiend-like street fights
of the South. If a young man feels offended with another, he does
not incline to a ring and a fair stand-up set-to, like a young
Englishman; he will not attempt to overcome his opponent by logic;
he will not be content to vituperate, or to cast ridicule upon him; he
is impelled straightway to strike him down with the readiest deadly
weapon at hand, with as little ceremony and pretence of fair combat
as the loose organization of the people against violence will allow.
He seems crazy for blood. Intensity of personal pride—pride in
anything a man has, or which connects itself with him, is more
commonly evident. Hence, intense local pride and prejudice; hence
intense partisanship; hence rashness and over-confidence; hence
visionary ambition; hence assurance in debate; hence assurance in
society. As self-appreciation is equally with deference a part of what
we call good breeding, and as the expression of deference is much
more easily reduced to a matter of manners and forms, in the
commonplace intercourse of society, than self-appreciation, this
characteristic quality of the Southerner needs to be borne in mind in
considering the port and manners he commonly has, and judging
from them of the effects of slavery.
It must be also considered that the ordinary occupations and
amusements of people of moderate wealth at the North are seldom
resorted to at the South, that public entertainments of any kind, for
instance, are impracticable to a sparse population; consequently that
where men of wealth are socially disposed, all intercourse with
others is highly valued, prepared for, and made the most of. Hence,
with these, the act of social intercourse is more highly esteemed,
and is much more frequently carried to a nice perfection of manner
than it usually is with men otherwise of corresponding education,
and habits at the North.
In a Northern community a man who is not greatly occupied with
private business is sure to become interested in social enterprises
and to undertake duties in them which will demand a great deal of
time and strength. School, road, cemetery, asylum, and church
corporations; bridge, ferry, and water companies; literary, scientific,
art, mechanical, agricultural and benevolent societies; all these
things are managed chiefly by the unpaid services of gentlemen
during hours which they can spare from their private interests. In
the successful operations of such enterprises they find much of the
satisfaction of their life. So, too, our young men, who are not obliged
to devote their thoughts chiefly to business success, are members
and managers of reading rooms, public libraries, gymnasiums, game
clubs, boat clubs, ball clubs, and all sorts of clubs, Bible classes,
debating societies, military companies; they are planting road-side
trees, or damming streams for skating ponds, or rigging diving-
boards, or getting up firework displays, or private theatricals; they
are always doing something, not conversing for the entertainment of
the moment. Planters, the details of whose business fall into the
hands of overseers, and young men of fortune, at the South, have,
when at home on the plantation, none of these occupations. Their
talents all turn into two channels, politics and sociality; the very
paucity of society making it the more esteemed and the more
carefully used. Social intercourse at the North is a relaxation from
the ordinary bent of men’s talents; at the South, it is that to which
mainly their talents are bent. Hence, with men who are otherwise on
a par, in respect of natural advantages and education, the
Southerner will have a higher standard of manners than the
Northerner, because, with him, social intercourse is the grand
resource to which all other possible occupations of his mind become
subordinate. The Northerner, being troubled by no monotony,
unquestionably too much neglects at present this, the highest and
final art of every type of civilization. In making this comparison,
however, it must not be forgotten that it is made between men who
are supposed to be equal in all respects, except in the possession of
this advantage, and who are equally at leisure from any necessary
habitual occupation for a livelihood.
Having conceded to the South certain elements of advantage in this
respect, for a single class, it still remains to inquire where is the
greatest weight of advantage for this class, and for all classes of our
citizens. In attempting to make such a general comparison, I shall
begin at the bottom of the social ladder, and return to the class who
can in a great degree choose how they will be occupied.
In the North at the Revolution we scarcely had a distinct class
corresponding to the lowest white class of Virginia, as described by
Jefferson, our labourers being less ignorant and coarse in their
habits, and associating much more familiarly with their betters. We
have now a class more nearly corresponding to it furnished by the
European peasant immigration. It is, however, a transient class,
somewhat seldom including two generations, and, on an average, I
trust, not one. It is therefore practically not an additional class, but,
overlooking the aged and diseased, a supplement to our lowest
normal class. Out of twenty Irish emigrants, landing in New York,
perfectly destitute, of whose history I have been intimately
cognizant, only two, both of whom were over fifty years of age, have
lived out five years here without beginning to acquire wealth and
becoming superior in their ambition and habits to the lowest order,
which I believe to include a majority of the whites in the plantation
districts of the South.[64] Our lowest class, therefore, has a higher
standard than the lowest class of the Slave States. This, I
understand, is made very evident where the two come together at
the West, as in southern Illinois. The very poorest and lowest New
England women who go there are frequently offended by the
inconsiderate rudeness and coarseness of the women immigrating
from the South, and shocked by their “shiftless,” comfortless,
vagrant habits, so much so that families have often removed, after
having been once established, to escape being bored and annoyed
by their Southern-born neighbours.
Referring to the lowest class, North and South, as the fourth, I class
as third, the lowest rank in society, North or South, in which regard
is had by its members to the quality of their associates from other
than moral motives, or the prejudices of locality, race, sectarianism,
and politics. In other words, that in which there is a distinct social
selectiveness and pride. I think that everywhere in the Free States
men of this class would almost universally feel their position
damaged—be a little ashamed—if obliged to confess that they did
not take a newspaper, or were unable to read it with a clear
understanding of the intelligence it was intended to communicate.
Allusions to the main facts of American history, to any clause of the
Bible, to the provisions of the Constitution, and the more important
laws, State and National, would be understood in most cases by
those whom I refer to as the third class in Northern society. In few
families of this class would you fail to find some volumes of the
English poets, or some works of great novelists or renowned
travellers. Nothing like this would you find, however, in a grade of
society distinctly superior to the lowest at the South.
The ratio of the number of the citizens who cannot read at all to the
whole, appears, by the census returns, to be only three times larger
at the South than at the North. I believe it to be much greater at the
South than these returns indicate.[65] The comparative education of
the third class “North” and of the third class “South,” however,
cannot be at all judged from these statistics, supposing them
correct. Those who can read and who do not read, or whose reading
is confined within extremely narrow limits, are a much larger number
at the South than at the North, owing to the much poorer supply of
books and newspapers which commerce can afford to put within the
reach of the former. The census returns two million newspapers, for
instance, printed annually in Virginia, one hundred and fifteen million
in New York. There is a post-office to every fourteen square miles in
New York, one to forty-seven square miles in Virginia; over five
hundred publishers and booksellers in New York, but forty in
Virginia. Thirty thousand volumes in public libraries in Virginia, eight
hundred thousand in New York. The area occupied by the population
of Virginia being much the largest, it may be inferred that with the
disposition and the ability to read anything in particular, the Virginian
of the third class will have to travel more than thirty times as far as
the New Yorker to procure it. The same proposition will hold good in
regard to most other means of cultivation, and the third class of the
South generally has seemed to me to be as much more narrow-
minded, rude, coarse, “dangerous,” and miserable, than the third
class of the Free States, as the most sanguine friend of popular
education could anticipate from these facts.
The great difference in character between the third class of the
South and that of the North, as indicated by their respective
manners, is found in the much less curiosity and ready intelligent
interest in matters which have not an immediate personal bearing in
that of the South. Apathetic carelessness rather than simple
indifference, or reckless incivility as to your comfort, is what makes
the low Southerner a disagreeable companion. It is his impertinent
shrewdness which makes you wish to keep the Yankee at a distance.
The first seems without object, spiritless; the latter keen to better
himself, if with nothing else, with information which he can draw
from you, and by gaining your good opinion.
The next or second class would include, both North and South, those
with whose habits and character I am most familiar, and of whom I
can speak with the best right to confidence. It would include in New
England and New York the better educated farmers—these owning, I
should say, half the agricultural land—the permanently established
manufacturers and merchants of moderate capital; most of the
shopkeepers and the better-educated master mechanics and artisan
foremen; most of the preachers, physicians, and lawyers (some
ranking higher). It would correspond most nearly to what in England
would be called the lower-middle class, but any higher grade being
very ill-defined, existing distinctly but in few localities, and rarely
recognized as existing at all, it is in a great measure free from the
peculiar vulgarity of its English parallel.
The number of those at the South who correspond in education and
refinement of manners and habits to the average of this class of the
North, it will be evident, from a similar mode of reasoning to that
before employed, must be very much smaller relatively, either to the
territory or the whole white population of their respective regions.
In the comparison commonly made by Southern writers between the
condition of the people of a sparsely-settled country and another, it
is usually assumed that the advantages of the latter are confined
exclusively to towns, and to large and crowded towns. By
contrasting the evils which concentrate in such towns with the
favourable circumstances of localities where at least wood, water,
and air are abundant, and corn enough to support life can usually be
got by any one with a little occasional labour, an argument of some
force to ignorant people is easily presented. The advantages
possessed by a people living in moderately well-occupied rural
districts, who are even more free from the evils of great towns than
their own people, are entirely overlooked by most Southern writers.
Such is the condition, however, of more white people in the Free
States than the whole white population of the Slave States. A
majority of our farmers’ daughters can walk from their dwellings to
schools of a quality such as at the South can be maintained not
twice in five hundred square miles. These schools are practically a
part of their homes. Probably, in more than half the families of the
South, the children of which are instructed to the least degree which
would be considered “respectable,” among this second class of the
North, private governesses are obliged to be employed, or the
children must be for many years at boarding-schools. We all know
that the young women who go to the South, to meet the demand
thus occasioned for home education, are not generally, though they
may be in cases, our own most esteemed and successful
instructresses; and we also know from their report that their skill
and labour has necessarily to be long chiefly employed in laying
those simple foundation habits of instructability, which our Northern
children acquire imperceptibly from association with those of the
neighbourhood slightly in advance of them. Churches and the
various sub-organizations centreing in them, in which class
distinctions are much lost sight of, to the great advantage of the
manners of the lower classes, and little chance of injury to the
higher; libraries; literary societies; lecture arrangements; dramatic
and musical, art and scientific entertainments, and also highly
educated professional men, with whom, for various purposes, many
persons are brought often in contact, are correspondingly more
frequent at the North, correspondingly more accessible; in other
words, the advantages to be derived from them are cheaper, and so
more influential on the manners of the people at large.
The common opinion has been that the Southerners or planters of
the class now under consideration, are more social, more generous,
more heartily kind and genial than Northerners. According to my
experience, the reverse of all this is true, as a general rule. Families
live so isolatedly at the South, that any social contact, out of the
family, is of course much more eventful and stimulating than it is
ordinarily at the North, and this accounts for the common opinion. I
could not but think, however, that most persons at the South looked
to the voluntary good offices and conversation of others, both within
and without their families, for their enjoyment of the world, much
less than most at the North. It may be that when in towns they
attach a greater value to, and are more careful to make use of the
opportunities for social gathering afforded by towns, than are
Northerners. In towns they attach more consequence to forms, are
more scrupulous in matters of etiquette, more lavish in expenditure
for dress, and for certain other things which are the signs of luxury
rather than luxury itself, such as plate and fancy brands of wines.
They make less show of fine art and less pretence of artistic
judgment; more of respect and regard for their associates, and of
indifference or superiority to all others.
As to manner or deportment simply, with the same impulse and
intention, that of the Southerner will habitually, under ordinary
circumstances, be best, more true, more composed, more dignified.
I have said that the second class at the North is without the
pervading vulgarity of the class to which it most nearly corresponds
in England, the reason being that those which constitute it seldom
wish or attempt to appear to belong to a superior class, not clearly
recognizing a superior class. Individuals, however, very generally
have a strong desire to be thought better informed, more ingenious,
more witty, as well as more successful in their enterprises than they
are, and this stamps them with a peculiar quality of manners
vulgarly called “smartness,” the absence of which makes Southern
men and women generally much more agreeable companions than
Northerners of the same degree of education and accomplishments
in other respects. Not but that snobs abound; of these it will be
more convenient to speak under the next division, however.
The traditional “old family,” stately but condescending, haughty but
jovial, keeping open house for all comers on the plantations of
Virginia or South Carolina, is not wholly a myth.
There really was something which, with some sort of propriety, could
be termed a gentry in Carolina and Virginia in their colony days; yet
of the names which are now thought to have belonged to it, as
descended of brave, loyal, and adventurous cavaliers, some I once
saw in London upon an old freight-list of a ship outward bound for
Virginia, with the addition of tinker and tailor, poacher and
pickpocket, all to be sold for life, or a term of years, to the highest
bidder when they should arrive. A large majority of the fathers of
Virginia were unquestionably of this class.
What was properly to be termed the gentry in Virginia and South
Carolina previous to the Revolution, was very small in number. A
large proportion of the families who composed it, and who remained
after the Revolution in the country (for many were Tories) have since
passed in all their branches through a poverty-stricken period, very
dissipating in its influence upon hereditary breeding, novelists and
dramatic old servants to the contrary notwithstanding. Many of those
who have retained wealth and family pride in succession to the
present time, have undeniably, from various causes, degenerated
wofully in breeding. Coarse tastes and brutal dispositions cannot be
disguised under a cavalier address, and the most assured readiness
in the established forms of polite society. Of the real “old families”
which remain at all “well bred” in their qualities, habits, and
manners, by reason of their lineage, I think it will be difficult for
most readers who have not studied the matter at all to form a
sufficiently small estimate; call them a dozen or a hundred, what
does it matter in a region much larger than the old German empire?
Associating with these are a few hundred more new or recuperated
families, in which there is also the best breeding, and in certain few
parts or districts of the South, to be defined and numbered without
difficulty, there is a wealthy, distinct, generous, hospitable, refined,
and accomplished first class, clinging with some pertinacity, although
with too evident an effort, to the traditional manners and customs of
an established gentry.
There was a gentry in the North as well as in Virginia and Carolina in
the colony period, though a less important and numerous one. As
the North has been much more prosperous, as the value of its
property has much more rapidly increased than that of the South,
the advantages of wealth have, I believe, been more generally
retained in families, and probably the number of those who could
trace their breeding in an uninterrupted parental influence from the
colonial gentry, is now larger at the North than the South.
Including new families, in whose habits and manners and
conversation the best bred people of Europe would find nothing
more offensive and inharmonious with themselves than might be
ascribed to local fashion or a desire to avoid appearances which,
though perfectly proper in an aristocratic society, would be snobbish
in a republic, there is unquestionably at this time a very much larger
number of thoroughly well-bred people in the Free than in the Slave
States. It is equally certain that the proportion of such people to the
whole population of whites is larger at the North than the South.
The great majority of wealthy planters who at the present day
assume for themselves a special social respectability and superiority
to the class I have defined as the second, are, as a general rule, not
only distinguished for all those qualities which our satirists and
dramatists are accustomed to assume to be the especial property of
the newly rich of the Fifth Avenue, but, as far as I have had
opportunity to observe both classes, are far more generally and
ridiculously so than the would-be fashionable people of New York, or
of any other part of the United States. It is a part of the rôle they
undertake to act, to be hospitable and generous, as it was lately that
of our fops to be sleepy and critical. They are not hospitable and
generous, however; they know not the meaning of these terms.
They are absurdly ostentatious in entertainment, and extravagant in
the purchase of notoriety; possibly they have more tact in this than
our Potiphars, but such has not been my personal observation.
 CHAPTER IX.
THE DANGER OF THE SOUTH.

“Before the advent of modern science, any idea of

systematic laws of human improvement would have been
deemed alike impossible and absurd; but the constant
observation of facts, the exact statistics recorded, the
progress of science in all departments, has made it
possible to conceive of, and probable that there actually
exist uniform laws of social movement, based upon any
given condition of society. If the elementary social
condition be different in regard to religion, government,
arts, science, industry, the resulting movements of society
will be different. Hence, when we have ascertained by
accurate observation upon and record of the social
phenomena, that the social movement is uniformly in a
certain direction, and that certain results uniformly follow,
we shall know in what elements the conditions of society
must be changed, in order to change the results. Hence,
when this law of social movements is ascertained, the
philanthropist, legislator, and jurist will know precisely
what must be done, and how, in order to remove the
evils, or reform the wrongs, or produce the results they
desire. They will know that certain elementary conditions
of society must be changed, and they well know that by
removing temptations, or laying restraints, or enlightening
the mind, or changing the course of industry, or producing
new arts, they will change the social tendency, and thus
change the results. * * * Society, or that part of it which
thinks and acts, can change the results by changing the
elementary conditions which produce them. When you
 know exactly what the change ought to be, it is not very
difficult to produce it; nor does it follow that because a
thousand crimes must be committed in Ohio, that a
thousand particular individuals must commit them. It is
true that the individual frequently acts from motives, but
is it not just as true that the individual frequently seeks
these motives, and presents them to himself?”—From the
Report of the Ohio State Commissioner of Statistics, 1859.
“If there is a first principle in intellectual education it is
this—that the discipline which does good to the mind is
that in which the mind is active, not that in which it is
passive. The secret for developing the faculties is to give
them much to do, and much inducement to do it.”—Mill’s
Political Economy.
The field-hand negro is, on an average, a very poor and very bad
creature, much worse than I had supposed before I had seen him
and grown familiar with his stupidity, indolence, duplicity, and
sensuality. He seems to be but an imperfect man, incapable of
taking care of himself in a civilized manner, and his presence in large
numbers must be considered a dangerous circumstance to a civilized
people.
A civilized people, within which a large number of such creatures has
been placed by any means not within its own control, has claims
upon the charity, the aid, if necessary, of all other civilized peoples in
its endeavours to relieve itself from the danger which must be
apprehended from their brutal propensities, from the incompleteness
of their human sympathies—their inhumanity—from their natural
love of ease, and the barbaric want of forethought and providence,
which would often induce desperate want among them. Evidently
the people thus burthened would have need to provide
systematically for the physical wants of these poor creatures, else
the latter would be liable to prey with great waste upon their
substance. Perhaps the very best thing to do would be to collect
them into small herds, and attach each herd to a civilized family, the
head of which should be responsible for its safe keeping. Such a
superintendent should of course contrive, if possible, to make his
herd contribute in some way to the procuring of its necessary
sustenance; and if, besides this, he even turned their feeble abilities
to such good account by his superior judgment, that they actually
procured a considerable surplus of food and clothing for the benefit
of others, should not Christendom applaud and encourage his
exertions, even if a certain amount of severity and physical
constraint had been found necessary to accomplish this success?

Let us endeavour to assume a similar difficulty for ourselves. Let us

suppose that a large part—the proportion varying with the locality—
of our own community should next year suffer from some new
malady, the result of which should in no case be fatal, but which
should, like the goître of Savoy, leave all who were affected by it
permanently injured in their intellects, with diminished bodily
activity, and fiercer animal propensities. (I take this method of
stating the case, because some of us who only see the negro as he
exists at the North might find it difficult to imagine him as he is
known to the planters.)
Suppose, further, that this malady should be confined to certain
families, as if its seed had been received hundreds of years ago by
numerous individuals, and only their descendants (but all of these to
the most distant trace of the blood) now suffered from it. Also, that
some of our doctors should be of the opinion that the effects of the
malady upon the intellect would descend to the children, and to all
descendants of those who suffered. Suppose that these unfortunates
should be subject to certain hallucinations, that they should be liable
to think themselves sane and able to take care of themselves, and
that when possessed with these ideas that they should be quite
cunning and dangerous in attempting to exercise the usual
prerogatives of sane men.
What should we do with them?
Finding them in a degree tractable; and sensible enough, after all, to
yield readily, if not cheerfully, to superior force, we might herd them
together on a sort of farm-hospitals, and let them earn their living,
giving especially capable men charge of many, and rewarding them
with good salaries, and ordinary small farmers, smaller numbers,
with smaller compensations for overseeing them?
Of course, we should place every possible legislative guard and
check upon these superintendents and overseers to secure fair and
honest dealing, to prevent them from making perquisites for
themselves at the expense of a reasonable comfort in their
institutions. Careful instructions to secure economical sustenance,
and how to turn such labour as could be got from the unfortunates
to the best account, in defraying the cost of their keeping, would
also be framed by talented men and furnished each keeper.
And having regard to national wealth, to the temporal good of the
commonwealth, this is about all that common sense would lead us
to do, at least through the agency of government.

Is this all, reader?

You have too much overlooked our small matters of State, if you
think so. We have a few crazy people, a few fools, not enough to be
a matter of much consideration to our statesmen or legislators, yet
we have a State system in our dealing with them, such as it is, and
such as it is it puts our dealing with them on a little different footing
than would the system I have above imagined. What I have
imagined is not quite all we have for some time been in the habit of
doing when we did anything with this class. And judging from what
we have done, it does not seem as if it would be all that we should
do in such an emergency as I have supposed, engaging as it would
all the talent of the country to diminish as much as possible the
necessary results of the calamity.
We should, it appears, call upon our learned doctors eagerly to
study; we should each of us eagerly observe for ourselves whether
the fearful infirmity by which so many were incapacitated for their
former usefulness, were not only absolutely incurable, but also
absolutely not possible to be alleviated. And if our observation
should satisfy us, if our doctors could not deny that, with judicious
treatment, a considerable alleviation could be effected, so much so
indeed, that with a very large part a close approximation to the
normal condition of sane and capable mankind could be obtained,
there are doubtless those amongst us who would think this a
dangerous and an infidel presumption. Just as every year some
miserable wretch is found in our dark places to have a crazy father
or brother whom he keeps in a cage in his garret, and whose estate
he takes care of, and who is of the opinion that it will be of no use,
but, on the contrary, a manifest defiance of Divine Providence, and
most dangerous to life and property to let this unfortunate out of his
cage, to surround him with comforts, and contrive for him cheerful
occupation, as our State requires shall be done. But would the
average common sense and humanity of the people of the Free
States allow them to refuse all reduction from their usual annual
incomes; refuse to suffer all necessary addition to then usual taxes;
refuse to burden their minds with the difficulties of the all-absorbing
problem, in order to initiate a remedial system? Our worst and most
cowardly legislature would never dare adjourn leaving this duty
incompletely performed. There are thousands on thousands of our
citizens who would not only spare from their incomes, but would
divide their estates for such a purpose. There is not a county that
would not submit to the highest war taxes for it.
Suppose that the doctors and that the universal observation of the
community should determine that the defective class were not only
capable of being improved, but that so far as their limited intellects
permitted, the laws of improvement were the same for them as for
healthy men; that they were found to be influenced by a liking for
food and drink, for the society of each other and of sane men, for
the admiration and respect of each other and of sane men, for their
ease, for dancing, for music and other amusements; and that their
imperfect natures could be acted upon, drawn out, and enlarged by
means of these likings. Suppose that it were found that nearly all of
them had still some knowledge of religion, that although they were
inclined sometimes to consider sane men as their enemies, they
were yet, in most cases, by judicious play upon their inclinations and
disinclinations, capable of being trained quite beyond the most
sagacious of our domestic animals, even to read intelligently. Should
we, because there were so many of them, go back two hundred
years in our civilization, denying ourselves the addition which this
capacity would give to their powers of usefulness, and consequently
of economy of maintenance; denying them the advantages for
improvement which we now in every State give to our hopelessly
insane, to our blind and mute, to our fools, to our worst and most
dangerous criminals.
Why do we not pass laws forbidding criminals and maniacs to read?
Our fathers did not allow them to read when negroes were
introduced in Virginia. But every man among us whom we call well
informed, now knows that it is a profitable business for the State,
which has so little profitable business, even to provide teachers and
books for a portion of her criminals, to allow books and encourage
reading with all. To provide books, to provide physicians, to provide
teachers, to provide halls and gardens of recreations, as stimulants
to healthful thought for our madmen and our fools; to this the State
is impelled equally by considerations of safety and of economy. Even
Kentucky has its State institution for the development of manhood in
fools born of white women.
Does not every such man know, too, that, given an improvable mind
with a sound body, possessed of the natural instincts, the usual
desires, appetites, aversions, no matter if at starting the being is
even what we call an idiot, a drivelling imbecile, disgusting all who
see him, a sheer burden upon society, the process of making him
clean in his habits, capable of labouring with a good and intelligent
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