294 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



often add luxuries from the hen-houses, or such as they 

 purchase with the sale of eggs and chickens, which they 

 frequently do to their own masters. In the yard of the 

 overseer's house is a large, airy building, neatly white- 

 washed, which is used when needed, for a hospital ; and 

 upon Christmas and other holidays and wedding festi- 

 vals, as a ball-room. I witnessed here again that same 

 kind of deep-seated love for 'old massa,' from the chil- 

 dren and several old negroes who were full grown when 

 he was born, and had lived to see 'young massa' grow up 

 in prosperity to provide for them in decrepid old age. 

 The gleam of joyous satisfaction, too, that beamed from 

 the eyes of two or three sick women, when 'good old 

 massa' called to see sick old Kitty, was enough to warm 

 his Christian heart to thank God that he was placed in a 

 situation where he could give so much happiness to his 

 fellow creatures." 



If the most cold blooded abolitionist that ever sought 

 to sever bands like these, can witness such scenes as this 

 and an hundred others that I have seen, and not feel and 

 acknowledge that he has had an erroneous idea of south- 

 ern slavery, then will I acknowledge that God makes 

 men with most unaccountable dispositions. It does ap- 

 pear to me most unaccountable, how any man, in his 

 sober senses, with a full knowledge of facts as they do 

 actually exist, can wish to dissolve the bonds between 

 master and slave, on account of, and under the plea of, 

 doing good to the slave. If he will say that he wishes it 

 solely on account of "ameliorating the condition of the" 

 whites, and that he conceives it necessary to sacrifice the 

 happiness of the slaves to effect this object, then will I 

 acknowledge that he has some show of reason and com- 

 mon sense on his side. But to set them free among the 

 whites, he will make them just as much more worthless 

 and miserable than they now are — not only as the free 

 negroes are now more worthless and miserable than the 

 slaves, but in just that proportion more so that the num- 

 ber of free negroes would be increased. To free them 



