THE TRANSPLANTATION OF A RACE. 519 



and partly because of the circumstances of their origin, the people 

 of the Southern highlands formed a curiously separated class. They 

 retained the quality of their English stock, as they had brought it 

 with them — an independence, a carelessness as to life, and a humor 

 for quarreling with those who were set above them whenever their 

 liberties or their license seemed to be threatened. Even their cus- 

 toms and utensils held with curious adhesion to the usages of earlier 

 centuries. Thus, in 1878, I found, in a secluded valley of south- 

 western Virginia, men hunting squirrels and rabbits with the old 

 English short bow. These were not the contrivances of boys or of 

 to-day, but were made and strung and the arrows hefted in the 

 ancient manner. The men, one of them old, were admirably skilled 

 in their use; they assured me that, like their fathers before them, 

 they had ever used the bow and arrow for small game, reserving 

 the costly ammunition of the rifle for deer and bear. These hill 

 folk were, in a passive but obdurate manner, opposed to slavery, 

 and even more to negroes. There are still many counties in this 

 district where a negro has never dwelt. In some parts of it I have 

 had people gather from twenty miles away to stare at my black 

 camp servants, as the folk of central Africa are said to do at a 

 white man. 



At the outbreak of the civil war the Appalachian upland was 

 still thinly peopled; it was, however, fitted to maintain a popula- 

 tion of some millions. If the Confederacy had won its independ- 

 ence, its plantation districts, with a relatively small voting popula- 

 tion, would soon have had to settle an account with the people of 

 the hills. As it was, the existence of this folk in a great ridge of 

 country extending from the ISTorthern States to within two hun- 

 dred miles of the Gulf of Mexico was an element of weakness which 

 went far to give success to the Federal arms. It kept Kentucky 

 from seceding, prevented the region of West Virginia from being 

 of any value to the rebellion, and weakened its control in several 

 other States. In all, somewhere near one hundred thousand re- 

 cruits came to the Federal army from this part of the South.. It 

 is not improbable that to this folk we may attribute the failure of 

 the great revolt. That they turned thus against the people of their 

 own States to cast in their lot with those who were strangers to 

 them shows their feelings toward the institution of slavery; it 

 indicated where they would have stood if the Confederacy had been 

 established. 



It is not easy to picture the condition of the negro population 

 in 1860. There is a common notion that it was consciously and 

 bitterly suffering from its subjugation — ready to rise in arms 

 -against its oppressors. This view was Indeed shared by the South- 



