his incident at Jackson's plantation, and even his sisters were shocked
at the interference between a master and his slave.

"You will get yourself into serious trouble with these fanciful notions
of yours," Mrs. Wingfield said angrily. "You know as well as I do how
easy it is to get up a cry against anyone as an Abolitionist, and how
difficult to disprove the accusation; and just at present, when the
passions of every man in the South are inflamed to the utmost, such an
accusation will be most serious. In the present instance there does not
seem that there is a shadow of excuse for your conduct. You simply heard
cries of a slave being flogged. You deliberately leave the road and
enter these people's plantation, and interfere without, so far as I can
see, the least reason for doing so. You did not inquire what the man's
offense was; and he may, for aught you know, have half murdered his
master. You simply see a slave being flogged, and you assault his owner.
If the Jacksons lay complaints against you, it is quite probable that
you may have to leave the State. What on earth can have influenced you
to act in such a mad-brained way?"

"I did not interfere to prevent his flogging the slave, mother, but to
prevent his flogging the slave's wife, which was pure wanton brutality.
It is not a question of slavery one way or the other. Anyone has a right
to interfere to put a stop to brutality. If I saw a man brutally
treating a horse or a dog, I should certainly do so; and if it is right
to interfere to save a dumb animal from brutal ill-treatment, surely it
must be justifiable to save a woman in the same case. I am not an
Abolitionist. That is to say, I consider that slaves on a properly
managed estate, like ours for instance, are just as well off as are the
laborers on an estate in Europe; but I should certainly like to see laws
passed to protect them from ill-treatment. Why, in England there are
laws against cruelty to animals; and a man who brutally flogged a dog or
a horse would get a month's imprisonment with hard labor. I consider it
a disgrace to us that a man here may ill-treat a human being worse than
he might in England a dumb animal."

"You know, Vincent," his mother said more quietly, "that I object as
much as you do to the ill-treatment of the slaves, and that the slaves
here, as on all well-conducted plantations in Virginia, are well
treated; but this is not a time for bringing in laws or carrying out
reforms. It