n; if he means well to the slave, he must not
create angry feelings in the master. Although he may not approve of
the mode by which it pleases Providence to accomplish its purposes,
the result will nevertheless be the same; and the reason he gives for
interference in what he has no concern holds good for every kind of
interference with our neighbours when we disapprove of their conduct."

With this view of the question Jackson was in perfect agreement. "I
am very confident," says his wife, "that he would never have fought
for the sole object of perpetuating slavery...He found the
institution a responsible and troublesome one, and I have heard him
say that he would prefer to see the negroes free, but he believed
that the Bible taught that slavery was sanctioned by the Creator
Himself, who maketh all men to differ, and instituted laws for the
bond and free. He therefore accepted slavery, as it existed in the
South, not as a thing desirable in itself, but as allowed by
Providence for ends which it was not his business to determine."

It may perhaps be maintained that to have had no dealings with "the
accursed thing," and to have publicly advocated some process of
gradual emancipation, would have been the nobler course. But, setting
aside the teaching of the Churches, and the bitter temper of the
time, it should be remembered that slavery, although its hardships
were admitted, presented itself in no repulsive aspect to the people
of the Confederate States. They regarded it with feelings very
different from those of the abolitionists, whose acquaintance with
the condition they reprobated was small in the extreme. The lot of
the slaves, the Southerners were well aware, was far preferable to
that of the poor and the destitute of great cities, of the victims of
the sweater and the inmates of fever dens. The helpless negro had
more hands to succour him in Virginia than the starving white man in
New England. The children of the plantation enjoyed a far brighter
existence than the children of the slums. The worn and feeble were
maintained by their masters, and the black labourer, looking forward
to an old age of ease and comfort among his own people, was more
fortunate than many a Northern artisan. Moreover, the brutalities
ascribed to the slave-owners as a class were of rare occurrence. The
people of the South were neither less humane nor less moral than the
people of the North or of Europe, and it is absolutely inconceivable
t