And many have carried the virtues of home
Abroad in the earth wheresoever they roam.
But what shall we say of the renegade knaves
Who down in the South become whippers of slaves?
Into ownership, too, peradventure they fall,
By wedding plantations, and "niggers" and all,
And then, for the depths of all infamy fit,
They find in Secession the bottomless pit.
A man born and reared in barbarism is with difficulty brought into the proprieties and amenities of civilization: alas! how easy a thing it is for a man born and reared in the midst of civilization to glide into the depths of barbarism! It is said that the meanest men, and hottest secessionists, and hardest slave-drivers in the South, are of Yankee origin! Not angels at home, how is it that any of them become such unscrupulous, incarnate devils abroad?