_Master and Slave._--Perhaps no period of human history has been more
misjudged and less understood than the slaveholding era in the
South. Slavery as an institution cannot be defended; but its
administration was so nearly perfect among our forefathers as to
challenge and hold our loving respect. It is doubtful if the world has
seen a peasantry so happy and so well-to-do as the negro slaves in
America. The world was amazed at the fidelity with which these slaves
guarded, from 1861 to 1865, the homes and families of the masters who
were fighting with the army that barred their way to freedom. If
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" had portrayed the rule of slavery rather than the
rarest exception, not all the armies that went to the field could have
stayed the flood of rapine and arson and pillage that would have
started with the first gun of the civil war. Instead of that, witness
the miracle of the slave in loyalty to his master, closing the fetters
upon his own limbs--maintaining and defending the families of those
who fought against his freedom--and at night on the far-off
battle-field searching among the carnage for his young master, that he
might lift the dying head to his breast and bend to catch the last
words to the old folks at home, so wrestling the meantime in agony and
love that he would lay down his life in his master's stead.

History has no parallel to the faith kept by the negro in the South
during the war. Often five hundred negroes to a single white man, and
yet through these dusky throngs the women and children walked in
safety, and the unprotected homes rested in peace. Unmarshalled, the
black battalions moved patiently to the fields in the morning to feed
the armies their idleness would have starved, and at night gathered
anxiously at the "big house to hear the news from marster," though
conscious that his victory made their chains enduring. Everywhere
humble and kindly. The body-guard of the helpless. The rough companion
of the little ones. The observant friend. The silent sentry in his
lowly cabin. The shrewd counsellor. And when the dead came home, a
mourner at the open grave. A thousand torches would have disbanded
every Southern army, but not one was lighted. When the master, going
to a war in which slavery was involved, said to his slave, "I leave my
home and loved ones in your charge," the tenderness between man and
master stood disclosed.

The Northern man, dealing with casual servants, querulous, sensiti