520 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ern people, who lived in clironic fear of insurrections. The error 

 of it arose from the fallacious notion that the people of another 

 race must feel and act as we would under like circumstances. The 

 facts showed that the negi-o mind does not work in the fashion of 

 our own. He had, it is true, suffered from slavery, but not as 

 men of our race would have suffered. Against its deprivations 

 and such direct cruelty as he experienced, not often great, he could 

 set the simple comforts and small pleasures which are so much to 

 him. That he was on the whole fairly contented with his lot, that 

 his relations with his masters were on the whole friendly, is sho^vn 

 by his remarkable conduct during and since the civil war. If the 

 ' accepted account of the negro had been true, if he had been for 

 generations groaning in servitude while he passionately longed for 

 liberty, the South should have flamed in insurrection at the first 

 touch of war. We should have seen a repetition of the horrors of 

 many a servile insurrection. It is a most notable fact that, during 

 the four years of the great contention, when the blacks had every 

 opportunity to rise, there was no real mark of a disposition to turn 

 upon their masters. On thousands of Southern farms the fighting 

 men left their women and children in the keeping of their slaves, 

 while they went forth for a cause whose success meant that those 

 slaves could never be free. 



That the negroes desired to be free is plain enough. The fact 

 that they fled in such numbers to our camps shows this. Their 

 failure to revolt must be taken as an indication that their relations 

 with their masters measured on their o'svn instinctive standards 

 were on the whole affectionate. They had the strength to have 

 made an end of the war at a stroke. They were brave enough 

 for such action. That they did not take it after the manner of 

 their kindred of Santo Domingo is the best possible testimony as to 

 the generally sympathetic relation which existed between master 

 and slaves. Of this no better test can be imagined than that which 

 the final stages of the institution afforded. 



In taking account of the history of the slave in this Union it is 

 not amiss for me to bear testimony as to the spirit with which the 

 body of our slave owners met the singular obligations of their 

 positions. There were here and there base men who abused their 

 trust as masters — some, indeed, who never perceived its existence. 

 But of the very many slave owners whom I can remember I can 

 recall but three who failed to recognize the burden that fate had 

 put upon them and to deal with it much as they dealt with the 

 other cares of their households — conscientiously and mercifully, 

 though often in the rude whacking way in which parents of old 

 dealt with their children; so far as slavery was a household affair, 



