We can't conceive how far the idea that work is dishonourable has entered the spirit of the Americans of the south. No enterprise in which negroes cannot serve as the inferior agents can succeed in that part of the Union ... I remember that a representative from the south being at my table in Washington could not keep from expressing his astonishment at seeing white domestics occupied in serving us. He said to Mrs. [Louisa] Adams, 'I find it a degradation of the human race to use whites for domestics. When one of them comes to change my plate, I am always tempted to offer him my place at table.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "We can't conceive how far the idea that work is dishonourable has entered the spirit of the Americans of the south. No enterprise in which negroes cannot serve as the inferior agents can succeed in that part of the Union ... I remember that a representative from the south being at my table in Washington could not keep from expressing his astonishment at seeing white domestics occupied in serving us. He said to Mrs. [Louisa] Adams, 'I find it a degradation of the human race to use whites for domestics. When one of them comes to change my plate, I am always tempted to offer him my place at table." in the context of "John Quincy Adams, speaking to Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831, as quoted in Susan Dunn (30 July 2007), Dominion of Memories: Jefferson, Madison, and the Decline of Virginia, pages: 33, publisher: Basic Books, ISBN: 978-0-465-00679-3" to mean that wisdom is timeless.