"Yes, it is slander to say you oppressed them;
Does a man squander the price of his pelf?
Was it not often that he who possessed them
Rather was owned by his servants himself?
Caring for all, as in health so in sicknesses,
He was their father, their patriarch chief;
Age's infirmities, infancy's weaknesses
Leaning on him for repose and relief.
"When you went forth in your pluck and your bravery,
Selling for freedom both fortunes and lives,
Where was that prophesied outburst of slavery
Wreaking revenge on your children and wives?
Nowhere! you left all to servile safe keeping,
And this was faithful and true to your trust;
Master and servant thus mutually reaping
Double reward of the good and the just?
"Generous Southerners! I who address you
Shared with too many belief in your sins;
But I recant it,—thus, let me confess you,
Knowledge is victor and every way wins:
For I have seen, I have heard, and am sure of it,
You have been slandered and suffering long,
Paying all Slavery's cost, and the cure of it,—
And the great world shall repent of its wrong."
I need not say what a riot that honest bit of verse raised among the enthusiasts on both sides. I spoke from what I saw, and soon had reason to corroborate my judgment: for I next paid a visit on my old Brook Green school-friend, Middleton, at his burnt and ruined mansion near Summerville: once a wealthy and benevolent patriarch, surrounded by a negro population who adored him, all being children of the soil, and not one slave having been sold by him or his ancestors for 200 years. According to him, that violent emancipation was ruin all round: in his own case a great farm of happy dependants was destroyed, the inhabitants all dead through disease and starvation, a vast estate once well tilled reverted to marsh and jungle, and himself and his reduced to utter poverty,—all mainly because Mrs. Beecher Stowe had exaggerated isolated facts as if they were general, and because North and South quarrelled about politics and protection. Mrs. Stowe, I hear, has learnt wisdom, as I did,—and now like me does justice to both sides. There is no end to extracts from my journals, if I choose to make them; but I think I will transcribe four stanzas which I gave to Williams Middleton in February 1877, on my departure, as they bring together past and present:—
"Ancient schoolmate at Brook Green
Half a century ago
(Nay, the years that roll between
Count some fifty-eight or so),—
Oh, the scenes 'twixt Now and Then,
Life in all its grief and joys,—
Meeting Now as aged men
Since the Then that saw us boys!
"There's a charm, a magic strange,
Thus to recognise once more,
Changeless in the midst of change
Mind and spirit as of yore;
Even face and form discerned
Easily and greeted well,
While our hearts together burned
At school-tales we had to tell.
"Mostly dead, forgotten, gone,—
Few old Railtonites of fame
(Here and there we noted one),
Yet we find ourselves the same!
Sons of either hemisphere
We can never stand apart,
With to me Columbia dear
And my England in your heart.
"You, of good old English stock,—
I—some kindred of mine own
Pound themselves on Plymouth Rock,
Five times fifty years agone;
So, I come at sixty-six,
All across the Atlantic main,
With my kith and kin to mix,
And to greet you once again!"
I may here record that, accompanied by Middleton, I watched at an alligator's hole with a rifle, but the beast would not come out, perhaps luckily for me, if I missed a stomach shot; that I was prevented from bringing down a carrion vulture, it being illegal to kill those useful scavengers; that I caught some dear little green tree frogs; that I noted how the rice-fields had become a poisonous marsh; that I noticed the extensive strata of guano and fossil bone pits, securing some large dragon's teeth, and with them sundry flint arrow-heads, suggestive of man's antiquity; that I lamented over the desolation of my friend's mansion and estate, and in particular to have seen how outrageously the Federals had destroyed his family-mausoleum, scattering the sacred relics of his ancestors all round and about. This was simply because he had been a Confederate magnate, and had owned patriarchally a multitude of slaves, born on the spot through two centuries. He and his kind brother, the Admiral,—my friendly host at Washington,—have joined the majority elsewhere; but I heard from him and others down South the truth about American slavery.
For remainder rapid notice. Paul Hayne the poet is remembered well; and the fine old great-grandmother with eighty-six descendants of my name; and thereafter came the inauguration of President Hayes, an account whereof I wrote to the English papers; and hospitalities at the White House, and records of plenty more Readings and receptions; and all about Edgar Poe at Baltimore, and my acquaintance with Henry Ward Beecher, and my final New York hospitalities, and my pamphlet "America Revisited," written on board the return steamer the Batavia,—and so an end hurriedly.