I once met in traveling an English gentleman, who asked me: “How can you bear those miserable black negroes about your houses and about your persons? To me they are horribly repulsive, and I would not endure one about me.”
“Neither would they have been my choice,” I replied. “But God sent them to us. I was born to this inheritance and could not avert it. What would you English have done,” I asked, “if God had sent them to you?”
“Thrown them into the bottom of the sea!” he replied.
Fortunately for the poor negro this sentiment had not prevailed among us. I believe God endowed our people with qualities peculiarly adapted to taking charge of this race and that no other nation could have kept them. Our people did not demand as much work as in other countries is required of servants; and I think had more affection for them than is elsewhere felt for menials.
In this connection, I remember an incident during the war which deserves to be recorded as showing the affection entertained for negro dependents:
When our soldiers were nearly starved, and only allowed daily a small handfull of parched corn, the Colonel of a Virginia regiment, by accident got some coffee, a small portion of which was daily distributed to each man. In the regiment was a cousin of mine—a young man endowed with the noblest attributes God can give—who, although famishing and needing it, denied himself his portion every day that he might bring it to his black mammy. He made a small bag in which he deposited and carefully saved it.
When he arrived at home on furlough, his mother wept to see his tattered clothes, his shoeless feet and starved appearance.
Soon producing the little bag of coffee, with a cheerful smile he said: “See what I’ve saved to bring black mammy!”
“Oh! my son,” said his mother, “you have needed it yourself. Why did you not use it?”