ve,
and lodged for a day in a sphere they resent, can hardly comprehend
the friendliness and sympathy that existed between the master and the
slave. He cannot understand how the negro stood in slavery days,
open-hearted and sympathetic, full of gossip and comradeship, the
companion of the hunt, frolic, furrow, and home, contented in the
kindly dependence that had been a habit of his blood, and never
lifting his eyes beyond the narrow horizon that shut him in with his
neighbors and friends. But this relation did exist in the days of
slavery. It was the rule of that _regime_. It has survived war, and
strife, and political campaigns in which the drum-beat inspired and
Federal bayonets fortified. It will never die until the last
slaveholder and slave has been gathered to rest. It is the glory of
our past in the South. It is the answer to abuse and slander. It is
the hope of our future.

_Ante-bellum Civilization._--The relations of the races in slavery
must be clearly understood to understand what has followed, and to
judge of what is yet to come. Not less important is it to have some
clear idea of the civilization of that period.

That was a peculiar society. Almost feudal in its splendor, it was
almost patriarchal in its simplicity. Leisure and wealth gave it
exquisite culture. Its wives and mothers, exempt from drudgery, and
almost from care, gave to their sons, through patient and constant
training, something of their own grace and gentleness and to their
homes beauty and light. Its people, homogeneous by necessity, held
straight and simple faith, and were religious to a marked degree along
the old lines of Christian belief. This same homogeneity bred a
hospitality that was as kinsmen to kinsmen, and that wasted at the
threshold of every home what the more frugal people of the North
conserved and invested in public charities.

The code duello furnished the highest appeal in dispute. An affront to
a lad was answered at the pistol's mouth. The sense of quick
responsibility tempered the tongues of even the most violent, and the
newspapers of South Carolina for eight years, it is said, did not
contain one abusive word. The ownership of slaves, even more than of
realty, held families steadfast on their estates, and everywhere
prevailed the sociability of established neighborhoods. Money counted
least in making the social status, and constantly ambitious and
brilliant youngsters from no estate married into the families of