With Lee in Virginia | Page 5

the
full as happy as the ordinary English laborer. He certainly does not
work so hard, if he is ill he is carefully attended to, he is well fed, he
has no cares or anxieties whatever, and when old and past work he has
no fear of the workhouse staring him in the face. At the same time I am
quite ready to grant that there are horrible abuses possible under the
laws connected with slavery.
"The selling of slaves, that is to say, the breaking up of families and

selling them separately, is horrible and abominable. If an estate were
sold together with all the slaves upon it, there would be no more
hardship in the matter than there is when an estate changes hands in
England, and the laborers upon it work for the new master instead of
the old. Were I to liberate all the slaves on this estate to-morrow and to
send them North, I do not think that they would be in any way
benefited by the change. They would still have to work for their living
as they do now, and being naturally indolent and shiftless would
probably fare much worse. But against the selling of families separately
and the use of the lash I set my face strongly.
"At the same time, my boy, whatever your sentiments may be on this
subject, you must keep your mouth closed as to them. Owing to the
attempts of Northern Abolitionists, who have come down here stirring
up the slaves to discontent, it is not advisable, indeed it is absolutely
dangerous, to speak against slavery in the Southern States. The
institution is here, and we must make the best we can of it. People here
are very sore at the foul slanders that have been published by Northern
writers. There have been many atrocities perpetrated undoubtedly, by
brutes who would have been brutes whenever they had been born; but
to collect a series of such atrocities, to string them together into a story,
and to hold them up, as Mrs. Beecher Stowe has, as a picture of
slave-life in the Southern States, is as gross a libel as if any one were to
make a collection of all the wife-beatings and assaults of drunken
English ruffians, and to publish them as a picture of the average life of
English people.
"Such libels as these have done more to embitter the two sections of
America against each other than anything else. Therefore, Vincent, my
advice to you is, be always kind to your slaves--not over-indulgent,
because they are very like children and indulgence spoils them--but be
at the same time firm and kind to them, and with other people avoid
entering into any discussions or expressing any opinion with regard to
slavery. You can do no good and you can do much harm. Take things
as you find them and make the best of them. I trust that the time may
come when slavery will be abolished; but I hope, for the sake of the
slaves themselves, that when this is done it will be done gradually and

thoughtfully, for otherwise it would inflict terrible hardship and
suffering upon them as well as upon their masters."
There were many such conversations between father and son, for
feeling on the subject ran very high in the Southern States, and the
former felt that it was of the utmost importance to his son that he
should avoid taking any strong line in the matter. Among the old
families of Virginia there was indeed far less feeling on this subject
than in some of the other States. Knowing the good feeling that almost
universally existed between themselves aid their slaves, the gentry of
Virginia regarded with contempt the calumnies of which they were the
subject. Secure in the affection of their slaves, an affection which was
afterward abundantly proved during the course of the war, they scarcely
saw the ugly side of the question. The worst masters were the smallest
ones; the man who owned six slaves was far more apt to extort the
utmost possible work from them than the planter who owned three or
four hundred. And the worst masters of all were those who, having
made a little money in trade or speculation in the towns, purchased a
dozen slaves, a small piece of land, and tried to set up as gentry.
In Virginia the life of the large planters was almost a patriarchal one;
the indoor slaves were treated with extreme indulgence, and were
permitted a far higher degree of freedom of remark and familiarity than
is the case with servants in an English household. They had been the
nurses or companions of the owners when children, had grown up with
them, and regarded themselves, and were regarded