522 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



their masters for a century or more. Such servants had rights that 

 none could dispute. Not uncommonly their elders were the actual 

 rulers of the establishment. These family slaves often received 

 some little schooling, even when the laws forbade that slaves should 

 be taught to read and write. The children of the household serv- 

 ants were allowed freely to play with those of their masters until 

 the young people were about twelve years old. The boys of both 

 often had their rough-and-tumble games together until they were 

 young men. The field laborers, where the class was separate, had 

 less perfect connection with their masters. They usually came to 

 the family storeroom for the daily issued rations, which they re- 

 ceived from the hands of the mistress or the daughter of the house. 

 They were visited when sick, and their complaints were heard. 

 They were free to all of the many festivities of the holiday time. 



It is impossible to conceive of a more effective schooling for the 

 African peoj3le than was given this adoption into the households, 

 and often into the hearts, of high-minded masters. A like opportu- 

 nity never before came and will never again come to so lowly a 

 folk. The effect of this educative contact with the superior race 

 is, as before noted, to be seen in the temper of the negroes during 

 and after the civil war. Upon the high-minded master the effect 

 of the institution was in many ways enlarging. A man is morally 

 what his cares have made him, and of these the dutiful slaveholder 

 has more than an average share. He grew. in the power of com- 

 mand and in the habit of doing justice to many fellow-beings. He 

 lived a large life. The qualities bred of his station have been of 

 profit to his folk and time. All this is true of slavery of the domes- 

 tic sort. It is not so in like manner of the great plantations which 

 came with the development of the cotton and sugar industries. It 

 was characteristic of the northern part of the South until it began 

 to be the place of supply for the rapidly developing plantation 

 district. 



So long as the negro could look forward to life in the place 

 and with the people of his birth his simple, careless nature opened 

 to him little to bring a sense of danger. He was to live on until 

 he passed in to the Elysium of the hereafter, of which he had no 

 doubt whatever. Gradually there came, in the overcrowding of 

 the farms and the diminishing fertility of the wasted land, the 

 need of reducing the number of slaves. Then each year came the 

 dreaded visits of the " trndor," who was like a visible angel of 

 death, to lead one or iii(»i-<' into the f;ir unknown country. Before 

 the plantation demand for slaves began there were, of course, sales 

 of slaves, but they commonly went as families, and not to places 

 to them inconceivably remote. These could hope for Christmas 



