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SAMBO: A MAN AND A BROTHER.
"But," I said eagerly, "you do not deny that slavery was a curse to the country—to Southerners most of all?"
"My dear fellow," said Captain S——, knocking off the ashes from his cigar, "don't go into that! We were talking about negroes, not about slavery. I suppose," he added meditatively, "there are not many men in the country who have faced more of the negro race than those of us who spent some part of our term of service in the Freedmen's Bureau. Imagine settling disputes from morning till night between negroes and between negroes and whites! If you abolitionists—as you called yourselves before the emancipation—want to have some of the romance and sentiment of negroism dissolved, live amongst them for a time."
"You were in Virginia?" I said.
"Yes, but the negroes there are a better class than in the States farther South and more remote from cities."
"How better?"
"Well, more intelligent. To see the deepest ignorance you have to go to the cotton-plantations, miles in extent, where men, women and children have been born and have died as cotton-pickers. Of course I am not now speaking of the freedmen as they are, for it is ten years since I was on duty in G——, Mississippi, where all the horrors of freedom were first revealed to the poor creatures."
"'Horrors of freedom!'" I repeated.
"It meant starvation to many, and intense suffering to others. Turn out a nursery of children of five years old to care for themselves, and they will fare better than many of the grown men and women of whom I knew in my Southern experiences."