SHEPHEIIDSTOWN, ON THE POTOMAC. 93 



about it, they spoke of it us a great wrong, but they did not blame 

 the South for it ; they only considered her less fortunate than the 

 North, in not having- gotten rid of it so soon ; and I have often heard 

 my father say that if the South were only let alone, slavery Avould 

 gradually die out from that part of the country as it had out of the other 

 part; for it is as much against the interest of the white man as of the 

 negro, and as hurtful. 



" Please, cousin Helen, don't call them negroes," said Ellen peevish- 

 ly, "it makes me so mad to hear you say negro; they are niggers; and 

 as for me, I don't care what the North says or thinks about it, I hope 

 that slavery will never die out; I want always to have a lot of little 

 niggers to box and order round." I could not help recalling, just 

 here, a speech of Harry's made only the night before, in the course of 

 a discussion on the inexhaustible subject of slavery, in which he said 

 that he considered that institution to be the cause of the chivalric 

 character of the Southern man, and of the noble and refined manners 

 of their women. I glanced at him as Ellen spoke, but he was appar- 

 ently quite unconscious. Indeed no one seemed to take the speech 

 amiss, and Mr. Devon laughed and clapped his hands and called her 

 a little patriot — why I could not exactly understand ; but then I was 

 often puzzled by their way of speaking, as if the North and South 

 were at variance ; and often, too, as if tliey were trying to make me 

 betray something, when really I had nothing to betray. But I was 

 gradually awakening to a knowledge of the bitter feeling toward the 

 North that existed here, and which was not so very unnatural if one 

 considers all the outrageous accusations that had been brought 

 against the South by fanatic though really sincere people. It mattered 

 little that it was a comparative handful of men who brought the ac- 

 cusations, and that the majority professed not to believe or care for 

 them which they did not ; the fact remained that such things had 

 been said, and that the professedly unbelieving majority had not 

 arisen in their might and annihilated those who had said them. Uncle 

 Tom's Cabin had been written and Mrs. H. B. Stowe was going about 

 untarred and unfeathercd ; in perfect safety in fact. All my own pro- 

 testations of disbelief in such exaggerated enormities had been useless; 

 I was constantly suspected, and I even felt that traps were laid for 

 me. Dreadful stories of the cruelties of Masters to their "servants" 

 as they called them, were told me, or in my presence, the strongest 



