“Well, how are you getting along?”
“Bad enough,” said he, “fur we hain’t had a grain o’ salt in the house fur more’n four months, only as the sheriff here gins it to us.”
“What do you live on, then?” I asked.
“Oh, on gophers and corn-meal, now-a-days. But, I golly! our meal’s out, and I don’t know what we’ll do next.”
I got this miserable creature to make me a pair of slippers from old boots, for which I paid him one dollar and fifty cents, in order that he might get some corn-meal, which sold at two dollars and fifty cents per bushel. This money was part of a sum that the sheriff had kindly lent me. Before we took our departure, the lady (?) of the hut gave us her opinion, in no measured terms, of the rascally Yankees.
“Ah, sir,” said the sheriff, when we were out of hearing, “if I were to speak the real sentiments of my mind, I should be hung before twenty-four hours. I am a Union man, and when you get back to Ohio, I want you to tell all the friends in our Church that I am so. I have twenty-seven negroes, and a thousand acres of land, and I would let the whole of it go, could I only see the Union restored to what it once was. But this I never expect to behold, for while slavery exists, the Union cannot be preserved. I am in reality an anti-slavery man, and these are my reasons therefor: First, it is a sin in the sight of God; secondly, it is an injury to the slave himself; and thirdly, it is an injury to the white race.”
“How so?” asked I.
“Because land worked by slave labor is not worth half so much as when worked by free labor. And, besides, if it were not for slavery, society would be much improved, for the rich and poor, as things are now, are very ignorant.”
“How do the rich obtain their wealth?” said I.
“In this way. A man comes here, perhaps, with one female slave, and, in a comparatively short time, he has quite a number of young servants about him. Some of these he sells, and with the proceeds purchases a piece of timber-land. This he has cleared, sells the timber, gets more slaves and another piece of land, and so goes on adding to his wealth continually. He has no education himself, and, three times out of four, gives his children none.”