Let the artist next put on the monument a picture of an old negro woman, the old Southern “mammy,” with the child of her mistress in her arms. Near by let old 57 Uncle Jacob be leading the little white boy, while down in the cornfield near by are seen Jacob’s sons and daughters at work singing the cheerful songs which the poor negro now has heart to sing no more. In the distance picture the faithful Bob or Mingo coming from the battlefield, bearing the dead body of his young master.
Let that picture tell to all generations the story of slavery. We had slavery, but, thank God, it was Southern slavery,—Christian slavery. Truth will explain the paradox, if there was any paradox. It had its evils, and nobody blushes because we had it, nor whines because it is gone. But as for any sin of the South in it, let the first stone of condemnation be thrown by that people who had no fathers cruel to their children, no husbands harsh to their wives, and no rich man unjust to the poor laborer.
The South never enslaved a single negro, never brought one to America. Georgia was the first of the settlements to forbid slavery, and Georgia and Virginia were the foremost States in cutting off the slave trade. The colony of Virginia petitioned twenty times against the continuance of the slave trade. The negroes were enslaved by their own savage chiefs in Africa. England and the Northern people brought them to America and sold them for gold. The Dutch brought twenty to Virginia, but were forbidden to bring any more. When found less profitable in the colder climate of the North, the negroes were sold South to become valuable tillers of the soil, and, after the invention of the cotton gin, to make the country rich. The Northern people at a good profit sold their slaves down South, put the money at interest, suddenly got pious, and waged a fierce war on the people who bought them. That’s history.
In 1861, on the first Sunday after the news of the fall of Fort Sumter reached England, the author, in company with a friend from Pennsylvania, who was an anti-slavery man, attended services in Mr. Spurgeon’s chapel in London. The great city was wrapped in the deepest gloom. The war storm in America was expected to ruin manufactures and trade throughout Great Britain. Mr. Spurgeon and his people seemed bowed down with sorrow. 58 On returning to our hotel my Northern friend remarked that he knew I didn’t approve of Spurgeon’s prayer about slavery. I said to him, “R——, just there you are mistaken. Some of my people in Alabama some time ago burned Spurgeon’s books because of some of his abolition views, but when I go home and tell them how this great Christian prayed to-day they will respect his honesty and sincerity. We blame nobody for being anti-slavery, but we do abominate fanatical abolitionism. Spurgeon is no fanatic. Listen to this Englishman: ‘O God, our people are in the ashes of woe. A dreadful war beyond the ocean has cut off our commerce and closed our factories, and thousands of our poor must sadly suffer. The people of the American States are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. O Lord, pity them, and pity us. O God, they and we have sinned in enslaving our fellow men. England put slavery on her colonies against the protest of those Southern people, and England must suffer Thy judgments for her part. Forgive the North, forgive the South, and forgive England. O pity especially the people of that section where the war will bear so heavily and pity the poor everywhere.’
“Now, R——, that’s a Christian prayer that we respect; and while Spurgeon goes back one hundred and fifty and even two hundred years and tells the truth about slavery, and for his English people, even to-day, shoulders their responsibility in this matter, how are thousands (thank God, but not all) of your Northern preachers in your churches at the North praying to-day? ‘We thank Thee, Lord, that this war has come. Somebody will get hurt, but we people up this way will come out all right because we are so innocent and so righteous. O Lord, we thank Thee that we are holy and not as other men are, especially these wicked Southern people. We thank Thee for short memories; that we have forgotten that we brought the negroes from Africa, kept them as long as it paid us, and then sold them to these Southerners; that we have forgotten that when Virginia and Maryland wanted to put an end to the slave trade, we out-voted them and kept the slave 59 trade open until 1808. Lord, we could have seceded from these savage Southern States long ago and got rid of any connection with slavery, for we believed in secession until just now. But, Lord, if we let the South go, as Mr. Lincoln says, where will we get our revenues? We thank Thee too that we have forgotten that those Southerners can’t get rid of the negroes without kicking them into the Gulf of Mexico. Lord, we thank Thee that we can see nothing but our own righteousness. We have tried to reform those wicked Southerners and make them good like ourselves, but we couldn’t. Now, Lord, we have brought on a war and we turn it over to Thee. We’ll hire Dutchmen and Irishmen to help Thee do our fighting, and we’ll stand off and enjoy the fun. Now, as Thou art about to pour out the vials of Thy mighty wrath upon the abominable Southern people, do, Lord, just give ’em—fits.’ Now, R——, there’s the difference between honest anti-slavery in England and the hypocrisy of the crusade in America.”
The truth is that in Southern homes, the negro prospered and multiplied as no other laboring class has ever done. The South shared with him its bread, its medicines, its homes and its churches. M. de La Tours, the eminent French hygienist, truthfully said that “The slaves of the South were the best fed and the best cared for laborers that the world ever saw.” No chain-gang, no penitentiary, for the negro, no lynchings, and no crimes to be lynched for, when the negro was under the influence of our mothers and grandmothers. God forgive the fanatic who in later days put folly in his head and the devil in his heart. Our mothers trusted him and he trusted them. All through the war, while nearly all the white men were away in the army, the negro slave was the protector and the support of Southern families. Our mothers would have died for the negroes, and negroes would have died for them. In Wilson’s raid near Columbus, Ga., his soldiers were about to destroy a patch of cane belonging to a widow. The brave woman took her gun and declared she would shoot the first man that touched her property. In their rage they raised their 60 rifles to shoot her down. Just then her old cook rushed in between them, saying, “If you are going to kill ‘old miss,’ you’ll have to kill me, too.”
When Sherman was plundering South Carolina, some of his soldiers heard that a young lady had a very fine gold watch concealed in her bosom. They demanded it, and on her refusal they were about to seize her, when Delia, her faithful servant, defied them. “Fore God, buckra, if one of younner put your nasty hand on dis chile of my ole missus you got to knock Delia down fust.”
The monument to the Southern woman will be a monument to our faithful old Dinahs and Delias too. The old ex-slaves will gather at its base and as the tears stream down their dusky cheeks they will say, as they say now, “Dat’s de best friend the poor nigger ever had,” and enlightened negroes, like Booker Washington, will tell the true story that out of slavery the North got money, the South got ruin, and the negro got civilization, Christianity, and contentment.
Let the next picture be an ear of corn, a spinning-wheel, and a hand-loom. Ceres was the goddess of the Sunny South, and the staff of our armies was the corn of our own fields. The South, however prosperous, was not made up of rich people. Not one man in ten owned a slave; not one slave holder in ten was wealthy. The small farms, many of them under the care of the soldier’s wife and the faithful old negro foreman, and many more tilled by the soldier’s boys under the eye of their mother, yielded a very large share of the Confederate supplies. While Minerva taught our men war she taught our women household work, and quickly did she make Southern beauties Arachnes at the loom and Penelopes with the knitting needles. They knew how to adorn the parlor and play the piano, but, when necessity came, like Lemuel’s mother, they “sought wool and flax and wrought diligently with their hands,” or even, like Rebecca, they could go out into the field and draw water for the cattle; or, like Ruth, hold the plow steady in the furrows, or glean grain at harvest time. False histories have pictured our mothers as doll babies. Let that monument 61 tell of the wonderful pluck, energy, and strength, while it tells of the patriotism of the smartest and sweetest and bravest and strongest doll babies the world ever saw.
The artist must do his best when he puts on that monument a little white hand—the well-shaped, classic hand of the Southern woman. In that hand must be held the little white handkerchief. What a part that handkerchief played in the war! Old soldiers, as you rode off down the lane, again and again you turned to take the farewell look at home, sweet home, and there was that little white handkerchief waving at the gate; or when your company left the railroad station there, all around, were the good women of the neighborhood, and as you looked far back down the track these little white flags bade you woman’s “good bye and God bless you.” You never forgot it. Whether we marched past country homes or through the streets of cities, woman’s heart-cheer greeted us in the handkerchief from the window. Perhaps it was held in the rheumatic hand of Mrs. General Lee as she looked out from her knitting in her Richmond home, or, later on we could see behind it the sad, mourning sleeve of Stonewall Jackson’s widow. I tell you, my countrymen, the bonny blue flag or the Southern Cross was the banner of the soldier on the battlefield, but the little white handkerchief was our sacred banner behind the battlefield. The one, in the hands of the color sergeants, guided our movements in the army; but the other, in woman’s hand, inspired our movements everywhere.