they have no profitable part or lot in it, they are
fiercely accessory, because it is the barrier that divides the black and
white races, at the foot of which they lie wallowing in unspeakable
degradation, but immensely proud of the base freedom which still separates
them from the lash-driven tillers of the soil.[3]

[Footnote 3: Of such is the white family so wonderfully described in Mrs.
Stowe's 'Dred'--whose only slave brings up the orphaned children of his
masters with such exquisitely grotesque and pathetic tenderness. From such
the conscription which has fed the Southern army in the deplorable civil
conflict now raging in America has drawn its rank and file. Better 'food
for powder' the world could scarcely supply. Fierce and idle, with hardly
one of the necessities or amenities that belong to civilised existence,
they are hardy endurers of hardship, and reckless to a savage degree of
the value of life, whether their own or others. The soldier's pay,
received or promised, exceeds in amount per month anything they ever
earned before per year, and the war they wage is one that enlists all
their proud and ferocious instincts. It is against the Yankees--the
northern sons of free soil, free toil and intelligence, the hated
abolitionists whose success would sweep away slavery and reduce the
southern white men to work--no wonder they are ready to fight to the death
against this detestable alternative, especially as they look to victory as
the certain promotion of the refuse of the 'poor white' population of the
South, of which they are one and all members, to the coveted dignity of
slaveholders.]

The house at which our call was paid was set down in the midst of the Pine
Barren with half-obliterated roads and paths round it, suggesting that it
might be visited and was inhabited. It was large and not unhandsome,
though curiously dilapidated considering that people were actually living
in it; certain remnants of carving on the cornices and paint on the panels
bore witness to some former stage of existence less neglected and
deteriorated than the present. The old lady mistress of this most forlorn
abode amiably enquired if so much exercise did not fatigue me; at first I
thought she imagined I must have walked through the pine forest all the
way from Darien, but she explained that she considered the drive quite an
effort; and it is by no means uncommon to hear people in America talk of
being dragged over bad roads in uneasy