met on the plantations. On enquiry he would learn that the slave in old age was sure of food and shelter and free from work, and that as he approached old age his task was systematically diminished. As to excessive toil at any time of life, he would perhaps conclude that it was no easy thing to drive a gang of Africans really hard. He would be assured, quite incorrectly, that the slave's food and comfort generally were greater than those of factory workers in the North, and, perhaps only too truly, that his privations were less than those of the English agricultural labourer at that time. A wide and careful survey of the subject was made by Frederick Law Olmsted, a New York farmer, who wrote what but for their gloomy subject would be among the best books of travel. He presents to us the picture of a prevailingly sullen, sapless, brutish life, but certainly not of acute misery or habitual oppression. A Southerner old enough to remember slavery would probably not question the accuracy of his details, but would insist, very likely with truth, that there was more human happiness there than an investigator on such a quest would readily discover. Even on large plantations in the extreme South, where the owner only lived part of the year, and most things had to be left to an almost always unsatisfactory overseer, the verdict of the observer was apt to be not so bad as I expected." (6 On the other hand, many of us know Longfellow's grim poem of the Hunted Negro. It is a true picture of the life led in the Dismal Swamps of Virginia by numbers of skulking fugitives, till the industry of negro-hunting, conducted with hounds of considerable value, ultimately made their lairs untenable. The scenes in the auction room where, perhaps on the death or failure of their owner, husbands and wives, parents and children, were constantly being severed, and negresses were habitually puffed as brood mares; the gentleman who had lately sold his half-brother, to be sent far south, because he was impudent; the devilish cruelty with which almost the only recorded slave insurrection was stamped out; the chase and capture and return in fetters of slaves who had It is needless to discuss just how dark or how fair American slavery in its working should be painted. The moderate conclusions which are quite sufficient for our purpose are uncontested. First, this much must certainly be conceded to those who would defend the slave system, that in the case of the average slave it was very doubtful whether his happiness (apart from that of future generations) could be increased by suddenly turning him into a free man working for a wage; justice would certainly have demanded that the change should be accompanied by other provisions for his benefit. But, secondly, on the refractory negro, more vicious, or sometimes, one may suspect, more manly than his fellows, the system was likely to act barbarously. Thirdly, every slave family was exposed to the risk, on such occasions as the death or great impoverishment of its owner, of being ruthlessly torn asunder, and the fact that negroes often rebounded or seemed to rebound from sorrows of this sort with surprising levity does not much lessen the horror of it. Fourthly, it is inherent in slavery that its burden should be most felt precisely by the best minds and strongest characters among the slaves. And, though the capacity of the negroes for advancement could not then and cannot yet be truly measured, yet it existed, and the policy of the South shut the door upon it. Lastly, the system abounded in brutalising influences upon a large number of white people who were accessory to it, and notoriously it degraded the poor or "mean whites," for whom it left no industrial opening, and among whom it caused work to be despised. There is thus no escape from Lincoln's judgment: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.' It does not follow that the way to right the wrong was simple, or that instant and unmitigated emancipation was the best way. But it does follow that, failing this, it was for the statesmen of the South to devise a policy by which the most flagrant evils should be stopped, and, however cautiously and experimentally, the raising of the status of the slave should be proceeded with. It does not follow that the people who, on one pretext or another, shut their eyes to the evil of the system, while they tried to keep their personal dealing humane, can be sweepingly condemned by any man. But it does follow that a deliberate and sustained policy which, neglecting all reform, strove at all costs to perpetuate the system and extend it to wider regions, was as criminal a policy as ever lay at the door of any statesmen. And this, in fact, became the policy of the South. "The South" meant, for political purposes, the owners of land and slaves in the greater part of the States in which slavery was lawful. The poor whites never acquired the political importance of the working classes in the North, and count for little in the story. Some of the more northerly slave States partook in a greater degree of the conditions and ideas of the North and were doubtfully to be reckoned with the South. Moreover, there is a tract of mountainous country, lying between the Atlantic sea-board and the basin of the Mississippi and extending southwards to the borders of Georgia and Alabama, of which the very vigorous and independent inhabitants were and are in many ways a people apart, often cherishing to this day family feuds which are prosecuted in the true spirit of the Icelandic Sagas. The South, excluding these districts, was predominantly Democratic in politics, and its leaders owed some allegiance to the tradition of Radicals like Jefferson. But it was none the less proud of its aristocracy and of the permeating influence of aristocratic manners and tradi tions. A very large number of Southerners felt themselves to be ladies and gentlemen, and felt further that there were few or none like them among the "Yankee " traders of the North. A claim of that sort is likely to be aggressively made by those who have least title to make it, and, as strife between North and South grew hotter, the gentility of the latter infected with additional vulgarity the political controversy of private life and even of Congress. But, as observant Northerners were quite aware, these pretensions had a foundation of fact. An Englishman, then or now, in chance meetings with Americans of either section, would at once be aware of something indefinable in their bearing to which he was a stranger; but in the case of the Southerner the strangeness would often have a positive charm, such as may be found also among people of the Old World under south ern latitudes and relatively primitive conditions. Newly- No doubt the sense of high breeding, which was common in the South, went beyond mere manners; it played |