If evil communications corrupt good manners, the intimate intercourse of the whites with these people must be depraving: nor can the exercise of despotic power by the masters, their wives and children be otherwise than unfavorable to the benevolent affections.
Tappan warns that close relationships between whites and enslaved people can lead to moral corruption among the former.
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Hence with them slavery is the INSTITUTION of the SOUTH, while it is in fact the institution of only a portion of the people of the south.
It is also a matter of notoriety, that the price of slaves has been and still is such as to confine their possession almost exclusively to the rich.
Slavery is maintained by you whom it impoverishes and degrades, not by those upon whom it confers wealth and influence.
You both know and feel that slavery has rendered labor disgraceful among you; and where this is the case, industry is necessarily discouraged.