the transition from absolute darkness to
absolute light, and then nature wears to his vision her naturally gay
and winsome appearance. So with the slave. His grasp of the conditions
of freedom is slow and uncertain. But give him time, lend him a
helping hand, and he will completely master the situation.

In one of the most remarkable pamphlets of the time, written by C.K.
Marshall, D.D., of Vicksburg, Miss., entitled _The Colored Race
Weighed in the Balance_, being a reply to a most malicious speech by
J.L. Tucker, D.D., of Jackson, Miss., I find many truths that the
American people should know. Both Dr. Marshall and Dr. Tucker are
white ministers of the South, and both should be intimately acquainted
with the characteristics, capacity and progress of the colored people.
But Dr. Tucker appears to be as ignorant of the colored race as if he
had spent his days in the Sandwich Islands instead of the sunny land
of the South.

Dr. Marshall says (p. 55):

I think I know nearly all that can be said against a Negro.
In one form or another, the complaints have been a thousand
times reiterated; but has he not been, and is he not now
what the white man and society have made him? He is
naturally peace-loving, docile, and imitative. If kindly and
justly treated, with due allowance for the _peculiar
elements_ that make up his life, he will render back, in
kind at least, equally with the brother in white in _like
surroundings_. Everybody knows some reliable, trustworthy
Negro man and woman; and John Randolph said that of two of
the politest men he ever saw one was a Negro. _Gentleness_
is a wonderful agency in managing a Negro: I know it tells
powerfully upon white folks. The psalmist, addressing his
Maker, says, "Thy gentleness hath made me great." It is a
mighty lever; it moves the world; it moved it before
Archimedes; it moves it still; but peevishness,
fault-finding, scolding, cursing, premature censure, haughty
and assuming ways, sullenness, ill-temper, whether in the
field, the kitchen, the nursery, or parlor, will
legitimately result in thriftlessness, revolt, departure,
and contempt for white people! Many of the young generation
have not yet found their places in the new order of things;
and their silly parents work themselves nearly to death to
keep their sons from the plow and to make ladies of their