the II Vol. of Annals of Congress.

Washington wrote to David Stuart in June 1790: "The introduction of the Quaker memorial respecting slavery was, to be sure, not only ill-timed, but occasioned a great waste of time."

In 1793 the Fugitive Slave law was passed, whereby a runaway slave captured in a free State, must be returned to his owner. As the new States were admitted into the Union they came in for the most part alternately free and slave States. This was done to preserve the balance of power in Congress.

The great aggressive Abolition movement that led eventually to the Civil War, had its birth in 1831. Fanatics like John Brown, and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, fanned into flame the sparks that had so long-smouldered, till the helpless negro was dragged from his havens of peace and comfort. If he felt bitterness towards the whites, what was to prevent his rising in insurrection and slaying them all? There were plantations where 600 or 700 slaves were governed by two or three white owners. They occupied little villages and had no care upon earth. They had their pastimes and religious worships. "The courtly old planter, highbred and gentle, the plantation "uncle" who copied the master's manners; and the broad-bosomed black mammy, with vari-colored turban, spotless apron, and beaming face, the friend and helper of every living thing in cabin or mansion, formed a trio we love to remember." The black woman cared more for her white nursling than her own child. This seems unnatural, but it was true; and many of us recall the times that the mistress of the house had to interfere to prevent the kitchen mother from cruelly whipping her naughty offspring. Some relic of ancient African barbarism still lingered in their untutored minds. We loved our colored playmates, and their sable mothers and fathers. Many a winning story of "way down upon de ole plantation" has been truthfully told. Will S. Hays has immortalized it in song.

A Southern writer has thus portrayed the Xmas time: "For weeks beforehand everything was full of stir and preparation. Holly and mistletoe and cedar were being put about the rooms of the big house to welcome home the boys and girls from school. Secret councils were held as to the Xmas gifts to be given to everyone, white and black. The woodpile was loaded with oak and hickory logs to make bright and warm the Christmas nights. The negro seamstresses were busy making: new suits for all the servants." The King was in the parlor counting out his money—to pay out for gifts of the season—and the queen was in the kitchen dealing bread and honey—to paraphrase Mother Goose. Into the stately plantation home, with its lofty white columns, its big rooms, and its great fireplaces, poured the sons and daughters, grandchildren, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces. Assembled around the groaning board, the patriarch asked the divine blessing and the twin spirits of christianity were rife in the land. There was only a fitful sleep for the small boys and girls, who were up at peep of day, stealing: from room to room crying "Christmas Gift!" Out on the back porches waited the negroes in grinning rows to follow the example. All week the cabin fires burned brightly and constant was the rejoicing over their treasures, not forgetting the grand eatables and the big bowl of egg-nogg.

Negroes are a religious as well as a superstitious race. At midnight Saturday it was their custom to ring the great plantation bell, and spend the next several hours in exhorting, praying and singing their curious, doleful hymns. The whites gave them instruction and training along these lines. Heart and conscious were alike cultivated—not alone the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Statistics show that there were 466,000 slaves belonging to churches in the South: Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and other sects. So the owners of these christianized people thought that they were doing missionary work in saving them from the cannibalism of heathen Africa. Both men and women were taught trades and useful occupations. There were tanners, shoemakers, blacksmiths, farmers, gardeners, horticulturists and carpenters among the men. The women could sew, cook, card, spin, weave, knit, wash, iron, in fact what they produced in this way would put to shame the acquirements and accomplishments of free labor. Many of the older negroes refused to be freed, when the mighty proclamation came. They would not withdraw from the protection of "Old Marster." Look at the product of these two generations of freedom. What is he? Well we know the painful answer.

But while the buying of slaves for domestic, or field service, was legitimate, the man who pursued the traffic as a business, and purchased merely to sell again, was despised. He was termed a "nigger-buyer," and was a pariah in the lowest sense of ostracism. It was claimed that there was a distinction with a very great difference. Three or four servants for ordinary household duties were deemed sufficient. On a farm more hands were needed, and the plantations further south required several hundred. The refractory slave of Kentucky and the border states, was sold "down the river" in commercial parlance, where the discipline of the rice, sugar, and cotton plantations kept in check his evil inclinations. There might have been cases of cruel punishment, but the rule was kindness—if for no other reason, the master would not injure that which stood for money, for property. The expense of keeping slaves was enormous. Where is the laborer of to-day who is furnished his house, clothing, doctors, medicine, and not a little pocket money on occasions?

The South employed her laborers to produce the great staple of cotton, which was to clothe mankind. They were properly clothed, fed and made comfortable. In addition, they were cared for when sick, and there existed the warmest affection for the majority of them. The world can nowhere show human beings as care-free in bondage as were the negroes of the ante-bellum days. Judge the Southern owner by the rule and not the exception. As well judge a town by its halt, maimed, blind, diseased and lawless citizens, as the slave owners by occasional acts of oppression to be found on the plantations. But it was the "Down east" Yankee overseer who was cruel—not the master. It was the African in New England who was denied religious teaching, and even baptism. There was no sympathy there, to quote from a writer, for the poor creatures transplanted from their native sunny clime, dying by hundreds from disease on the bleak Northern shores. It was merely a question of profit and loss. They were sold to the South as fast as they could be shipped. Even when the great hue and cry for freedom led the Northern Senators to legislate for the cessation of foreign slavery in 1808, these great philanthropists rushed over some 5,000 slaves to sell to the South before the limited date could come around. Many prominent rich men of New England made their money by this traffic, then pulled a long face of condemnation for the Southern planter, whose money had been paid over to swell the Northern coffers.

IT IS WORTHY OF NOTE THAT THE SOUTH NEVER OWNED OR SAILED A SLAVE SHIP.

In 1861 Mr. C.C. Glay, of Alabama, made a bitter speech in the United States Senate. Part of his arraignment was that not a decade had passed that the North had not persecuted the South on account of her slaves.

"You denied us Christian communion because you could not endure slave-holding. You refused us permission to sojourn, or even pass through the North with our property. You refused us any share of the lands acquired mainly by our diplomacy and blood and treasure. You robbed us of our property and refused to restore it."

The speaker went minutely into the outrages perpetrated by the Abolition party. The list of oppressions had reach a crisis. Meanwhile the cotton and the cane went on in Dixie land, to the weird ditties and the quaint folk-lore of the happy-go-lucky race. So the outbreak of the war found the American slave in the height of