In the State of Georgia it was for a time against the law to hold negro slaves.
After a while, it was found that the climate at the North was too cold for the negro to thrive. It did not pay the men at the North to keep them, and so they were sold to the Southern planters.
In the South, the climate was hot, like that of their native Africa, so they did well in that sunny land.
In 1808, it was made unlawful to bring any more slaves from Africa to the United States. The people at the South were glad that the trade in slaves was stopped, but the Northern traders were of course sorry that they could make no more money in that way.
When the negroes were first brought from Africa, they were heathen savages; but, after a few years, they learned the speech and customs of the whites; and, more than all, the worship of the true God. In thinking of this, we have to admit that slavery must have been permitted by the Lord in order to bring a heathen people out of darkness into the light of the Gospel.
There were now four millions of negroes in the South. There was great love between the blacks and their masters, as we have seen when John Brown tried to get the former to rise up and slay the whites. For years, there had been a feeling in the North that it was wrong to own slaves, and some of the people began to hate the South and to try to crush it.
The South felt that they owned the slaves under the law, or Constitution of the United States, and that they ought to be let alone. They also claimed that the slaves, as a class, were better treated than any other working people in the world. They, moreover, said that the Southern States had a perfect right to go out of the Union, if they wished, and set up a government for themselves. This the North denied; and thus they quarreled about the rights of States, and slavery, and other things, until they began to think of war.
In a short time after the John Brown Raid, Colonel Lee was back at his post in Texas, but he was much troubled at the state of his dear country. He loved the Union and had lived nearly all his life in its service; but he knew that Virginia was in the right, and that he could not fight against his native State.
So, when the war came, he left the United States Army to fight for Virginia and the South.
He was offered the chief command of the United States Army if he would remain in the “Union” service. He knew that if he went with the South he would lose his rank, and also his lovely home—Arlington, but “‘none of these things moved him’; his only wish was to know, that he might walk the path of duty.”