[126]
to the indisputable fact that the negroes could have ended the war during any one day or night that it lasted.
And the kindly attitude of the negro to the master was shown not negatively only, not by forbearance only.
Not only did a vast majority of them stay at their posts, working to feed and watching to protect the families of the absent soldiers—when all the able-bodied white men were absent soldiers—but after their emancipation ten thousand examples occurred of respectful and grateful and even generous conduct to their late masters, for one instance, where a revengeful or a reproachful or even a disrespectful demonstration was made.
Of the few survivors of those who stood in the relation of master and slave, a considerable number still maintain relations of strong and often tender friendship.
John Stuart Mill worshipped liberty and detested slavery, but he confessed that the good will of the slaves to the masters was to him inexplicable.
And all this is none the less true, if all be granted as true about the abuses of slavery that Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe painted in ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin’ and in the ‘Key to Uncle Tomn's Cabin.’
Abuses no less vile and on a far greater scale have occurred and still occur in England and America, with all their boasts of freedom, not to speak of late occurrences in South Africa and in the Philippines.
To-day the negro is a formidable danger to the State and to society, and a danger that threatens only too surely to become constantly a greater danger.
Elaboration of this proposition is unnecessary.
The curious may still see a manuscript letter in which Peter Minor, of Petersburg, Virginia, frankly tells his nephew John Minor, of Fredericksburg, that the Virginia Legislature did right in rejecting a bill the nephew had proposed for the emancipation of the negroes, and says that they had as well turn loose bears and lions among the people.
The Virginians of that day were as ardent lovers of all attainable liberty as the Virginians of the sixties, whose conduct in the war between the States has at last extorted high praise even from such a representative of the best product of New England as Mr. Charles Francis Adams, son of Mr. Lincoln's Minister to England.
The Virginians of a still earlier day, with other Southern leaders, notably the Georgians, had striven often and in vain to get the importation of slaves stopped, but Parliament before the Revolution and Congress afterwards listened to the owners of the slave-ships of Old England and New England and continued the slave trade.
Many of the fortunes that now startle us with their splendor in Newport,
Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
chapter:
Shall
Cromwell
have a statue?
Graduates of the
United States Military Academy
at
West Point, N. Y.
, [from the
Richmond, Va.
, Dispatch,
March
30
,
April
6
,
27
, and
May
12
,
1902
.]
Treatment and exchange of prisoners.
Battle of Cedar Creek
,
Va.
,
Oct.
19th
,
1864
.
Narrative of events and observations connected with the wounding of General T. J. (
Stonewall
)
Jackson
.
chapter 1.6
Lee
,
Davis
and
Lincoln
.
chapter 1.8
The last tragedy of the war. [from the
New Orleans, La.
,
Picayune
,
January
18
,
1903
.]
chapter 1.10chapter 1.11chapter 1.12chapter 1.13chapter 1.14chapter 1.15
Elliott
Grays
of
Manchester, Va.
[from the
Richmond, Va.
, times,
November
28
,
1902
.]
Thrilling Chapter [from the
Richmond
, Va, Dispatch,
July
21
,
1902
.]
chapter 1.18chapter 1.19chapter 1.20chapter 1.21chapter 1.22chapter 1.23chapter 1.24
Fatal wounding of General J. E. B
Stuart
.
chapter 1.26chapter 1.27
Johnson's Island
.
Refused to burn it. [from the
Richmond, Va.
, Dispatch,
April
27
,
1902
.]
chapter 1.30chapter 1.31
The campaign and battle of
Lynchburg
.
Appendix.
chapter 1.34chapter 1.35chapter 1.36
Roll and roster of
Pelham
's,
chapter 1.38chapter 1.39
Why we failed to win.
Recollections of
Cedar Creek
and
Fisher's Hill
,
October
19th
,
1864
.
Index
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
![>](/img/east.gif)
![>](/img/east.gif)
![>](/img/east.gif)
![>](/img/east.gif)
![view as XML](/img/xml.gif)
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.
show
Browse Bar
hide
Places (automatically extracted)
View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.
Sort places
alphabetically,
as they appear on the page,
by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
New England (United States) (2)Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Petersburg, Va. (Virginia, United States) (1)
Newport (Rhode Island, United States) (1)
Fredericksburg, Va. (Virginia, United States) (1)
Africa (1)
Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.
hide
People (automatically extracted)
Sort people
alphabetically,
as they appear on the page,
by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1)Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Peter Minor (1)
John Minor (1)
Abraham Lincoln (1)
Charles Francis Adams (1)
hide
Search
hide
Display Preferences