but which are
both in the main true. On the one hand, a visitor from England or the
North, coming on a visit to the South, or in earlier days to the British
West Indies, expecting perhaps to see all the horror of slavery at a
glance, would be, as a young British officer once wrote home, "most
agreeably undeceived as to the situation of these poor people." He would
discern at once that a Southern gentleman had no more notion of using his
legal privilege to be cruel to his slave than he himself had of
overdriving his old horse. He might easily on the contrary find quite
ordinary slave owners who had a very decided sense of responsibility in
regard to their human chattels. Around his host's house, where the
owner's children, petted by a black nurse, played with the little black
children or with some beloved old negro, he might see that pretty aspect
of "our institution at the South," which undoubtedly created in many
young Southerners as they grew up a certain amount of genuine sentiment
in favour of slavery. Riding wider afield he might be struck, as General
Sherman was, with the contentment of the negroes whom he 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 overs