Such an act was sure to bring its own retribution, and in this case the whole country suffered.

To-day, without speaking of the advisability of having given the right of suffrage to many who were not prepared for it so soon, or of wise restrictions or qualifications, it can only be said that if we do not see that every legal vote is honestly cast and counted, we may expect worse troubles in the future than we have expe

rienced in the past. This is no question of section and must not for a moment be so treated; it is the underlying principle on which the structure of our nationality rests. If we are true to it, we may hope for ourselves greater prosperity in the future than we have thus far enjoyed, and hope to be a worthy example and encouragement to other nations, who, in our poet's words, are "hanging breathless on our fate."

T

HESE recollections do not embrace reminiscences of any distinguished individuals who have figured in the nation's history in the matter of emancipation. I shall deal only with the negro slavery of the South as it came directly under my own observation as owner of slaves, or as the son of a slaveholder. I desire to let some especially readers born since the death of slavery-know something of the actual realities of the subject. No one living knows the true facts connected with slavery excepting those who lived in the South with the negro slave element, at a period anterior to 1861.

I may be permitted to say that I was born in the South; was reared here; have always lived here, save in the intervals of travel in other lands. Hence I have been familiar with slavery from my birth. My father and my grandfather before him were slaveholders; and as I grew up into childhood and youth I was accustomed to look upon negro servants as something but "a little better than a dog, a little dearer than the horse," until I saw, for the first time in my life, the slave placed upon "the Block" - offered for sale to the highest bidder in public, in

the outcry of a jocose auctioneer. This was the pebble- or the very mountain — that turned the stream of my thoughts.

Graphic pictures of slavery pictures true and pictures false, pictures of beauty and pictures of horror- have been given to the world by friend and foe of the institution. The subject has been treated under many lights; yet the youth and many of the aged of the land to-day know but little of the home life or personal existence of the slave as he toiled or was sold and died in the long years gone by. The pictures of slavery which will last longest are those drawn by persons who never saw the slave in bondage by those who never beheld the real slavery of the Southern States as it existed in the "ante-bellum" days.

One usually believes a thing when one wishes to believe it. The wish is often father to the conviction, as well as father to the thought. We are usually ready to receive and retain impressions which appeal to our sympathetic emotion. One is easily convinced when the will is in harmony with the argument addressed to

one.

Slavery! The very word itself is, and always has been, in many minds, sugges

so conspicuously announced in the language of the advertisement calling public attention to the coming event which revealed to many the existence of the horror. Then and there was enacted a scene which neither time nor events, which neither the memories of war and famine and "reconstruction," and countless other chapters of suffering and humiliation and wrong have ever effaced or made dimmer in my memory. The first damning shadow or track of the curse of slavery then fell across my pathway, and I have never forgotten the picture or the terrible fact itself; they are burned into the undying soul forever.

My grandfather had died, and all his slaves were to be sold. Sundry other indivisible properties not devised in his will were, with the slaves, all to be put up to the highest bidder in public outcry. It had been ascertained that it would be impossible to divide the family servants and some other valuables, so that this child or that child should receive exactly such pieces of property as were desired by the respective sons and daughters of the testator- the good man who desired to do right without evincing undue favor in behalf of any one.

In the days of slavery, fixed values were not usually known as applying to servants alike, except perhaps as the figures related to the ordinary "field hands." These had values running from eight hundred to a thousand dollars for grown men and women in the prime or vigor of life. House servants, extra good cooks,

and mechanics of all classes ran up sometimes as high as two thousand dollars each for "likely" and accomplished skilled servants. Fancy, desire, and ability to pay often regulated prices, just as they do to-day in the matter of art treasures. A skilled speculator in human flesh always knew how and where and with whom to drive good trade in his own interest. The auctioneer's "Block" at a country sale rarely developed extreme or "fancy" prices. But then that provided the only method known of obtaining a fair distribution of the estate of a large slaveholder whose properties could not be satisfactorily devised among heirs, as it was in the case of my grandfather. Half of the daughters, we will say, wanted Judy, she was such a good cook; the children all loved Judy, and Judy was therefore much coveted. More than two of the sons wanted Dan, the blacksmith. But nobody wanted old Sam in his decrepitude; nor could any be found who were willing to have, under any consideration, foolish Cinda.

So there was the one alternative—"the Block." That would give an equal division in gold dollars, in silver coin, if the black ink of the will could not place the black individuals where they would do the most good and the least harm in the affections and desires of the children of the kindhearted old father. The negroes, and the horses, and the family carriages, — each and all, with slight exception, coveted and anxiously sought by various members of the family- the negro, the horse, the carriage, these all must go to the highest bidder, at the public sale. If John, or Joseph, or Susan, or Mary wanted Judy, or Ned, or Big Jim, or the Salem carriage,

why, all that was in it, John, or Jo, or Susan, or Mary could outbid Isaac or Elizabeth, or the dozen other children; for there were seventeen in all, eight sons and nine daughters, and the father had lived to see them all grown, and all fortunately married, excepting the youngest three, who were yet single, though past the majority.

The Block would determine the cash value each child placed upon desire; it would test the estimate each child placed upon the dear heirlooms of the ancestral

home. As far as the negroes themselves were concerned, they would have willingly gone anywhere among "Ol' master's chillun." But between them and the going, there stood that dread instrument of cruelty-"the Block"- the awe and the terror to the unfortunate slave in the days now happily gone forever.

The blacks were to go that was settled; whither, oh, whither, they knew not, and so the agony of suspense hung upon them more than a goading burden

it was a double torture upon the poor souls. There were large and likely families. There were among them expert men, mechanics with families, and valuable breeding women, women who had born to them at briefest natural intervals, the strong, healthy child,-women that in themselves were considered good fortunes, for they represented capital, the income of which was equivalent to three or four hundred dollars biennially, or in less periods. Then there was one man among the others who had the Indian's art of dressing buckskin,- my grandfather kept his negro men well clad, in proper season, in the best of buckskin. He kept regularly on hand a royal supply of the dressed material. He had migrated to his home when the country was almost a wilderness, and when, as I have heard my mother say, it was no trouble to go out and kill as many as three or four deer in a morning before breakfast. The tanner in the quarters was therefore a valuable man, even though, at the time of sale, the game was growing scarce.

But on the whole, as I have said, the occasion was to be a great event in the history of that country- the offering of so many valuable slaves at public outcry. Bidders came in from three or four states, for the coming event had been given all possible publicity.

Among those coming and anxious to invest in the human flesh were several professional speculators, men well known as "nigger traders." In those days the colored people looked upon this class of mankind as something worse than fiends - men more dreaded than the very devil himself. For the devil could not separate families, true and loyal to the Master above. But the speculator, he could

separate man and wife, and mother and child-here, on earth; he could drag, with cuff and chain, the idolized son away from the doting old father.

And the separations in those days were worse than death; for in death you might possibly know where to find the grave of the loved one - you knew what earthly fate had befallen the absent. But in slavery, when the fond mother saw her child or her husband go away, with perchance the iron band at wrist or ankle, the clank, clank of the chain keeping time to the departing step, she knew that, for her, there was to be, never, never, any revelation of the existence elsewhere. The slave maelstroms to the far South, — on the coast of Georgia, in Alabama, and Mississippi, -- that swallowed up the spare or surplus products of the less profitable field to the North, where the slave was sold more frequently from necessity than otherwise, those maelstroms were, to the slave parent and the slave wife, more terrible than the grave, more bitter to the contemplation than the death agony itself. The uttermost hell of the Virginia or Tennessee slave was in the far-away torments of Mississippi or Alabama. And the clank, clank of the chain that led the husband away from the old native homestead - the woman heard it forever, till the grave closed over her. Perhaps its echoes are ringing yet in the other world. The pitying God only knows all the horrors and sorrows of that awful curse slavery. I sometimes think it is best that only one Eye can witness all the crimes committed on earth — only one Ear hear all the wails of woe that go up from agonized souls. But slavery did not does not hold the sum and substance of all our wrongs, North or South.

And so it was that when the morning of the fateful day came round, and the slaves of my grandfather's estate were to be put on "the Block," the poor negroes were all in a state of utmost despair and goaded anxiety - - all on account of the presence of the negro speculators among the colored people. The strangers from the distant maelstroms were there, and they had been going through and through the quarters, all the early morning, in the

inquisitorial examinations — holding brief and pointed conversations with all the blacks, especially wherever fancy had been prepossessed.

The traders had their regular routine of questions and observations—just as the army surgeons and physicians had during the war; for who of the old survivors has not heard the same questions asked a score of times, in a dozen different words the same sequitur always to follow: "How are the bowels?" "How is the tongue?" "Let me feel the pulse." Then, "Here, take this pill!" No matter what the ailment, the remedy was embraced in that one kind of pill! Please remember, my dear northern friend, this was in the Confederate hospitals, the "Blockade" not permitting diversity in the Confederate medicine chest.

The speculator would ask, invariably, these questions: "How old are you, Buck?" (Generally, every young black man whose name was as yet unknown would be saluted with the title "Buck." Older ones were addressed as "Uncle.") Then would come : "What do you know?” "What can you do?" "Are you a mechanic or a field hand?" "Open your mouth, and let me see your teeth!" Young darkies in the South nowadays need not be asked to perform this last operation, for the mouth usually flies open involuntarily at sight of the stranger; but in the old days of slavery, the blacks instinctively wore the compressed lip and severe countenance, when in the presence of the arch fiend, the "nigger trader."

In addressing females, the colloquy would usually begin: "How old are you, Puss?" ("Puss ' went for the female old or young; but women of matronly appearance were usually addressed as "Aunty.") Then would come: "Are you a cook, a washwoman, a nurse, or a field hand?" The bitter pill was in the sure-to-come question:

"How would you like to go to Alabama, or Mississippi, or Georgia, to pick cotton?"

Going away from the old Tennessee home, to pick cotton in an unknown world! This was marching away to torment, the land of despair, never to behold

the face of the old home or loved one again, forever! It is no wonder that the first cry of many of the happy freed people, in April, 1865, when the old owners went home from the war and told their late slaves that they were now free, sure enough,— no wonder the first cry was: "I's a gwyne to hunt my kinfolks now!"

Not all the books that were ever written could contain all the sorrowful stories of the separation of kinfolks in black during the years of slavery; nor could the books picture, in actual fidelity to truth, the pitiful woe felt for ages in the negro's soul. The old slavery in the South had many, many features of good and virtue and happiness, revealing a blessed humanity; but the one canvas portraying separations, that horrid spectacle outlasts and outcounts everything that was ever taught by the humanitarian defender of the institution. "The Block," the slave-trader, these have made the blackest page in the history of human woe and suffering. coming sale.

But let us return to the

There are the heavily dressed and bejewelled spectators going their round among the trembling, fearstricken slaves, as they gather in groups about the corners of their cabins. No suggestions as to lovers or future wives and husbands in the far South could atone for the idea of leaving the old plantation. The fact is, nobody, except the white young men, wanted to go to Georgia, or Alabama, or Mississippi, from that country -no odds how pleasing were the tales told by these strange men, about the fat 'possums and the luscious sweet potatoes, about the watermelons, big as the washing-tubs in Tennessee or Virginia, about the future lovers and all that in the far-off land of cotton and of "happy niggers." Yes, it was "happy niggers that lived there in the great cotton fields so said!

But no! the molten lead had already gone down into the hearts of the perturbed slaves, and any one with half a soul or half an eye could discover the fact that the negroes were human beings, beings moved by the same impulses and longings which actuated and held the people of a whiter race. The poor negroes displayed the soulful conditions in their

pathetic and persistent pleadings with the "heirs" to "buy them in," and not allow the old family slaves to be taken away by the speculators. Plainly, there was anguish with consternation in every black face in that great yard, now filled with hundreds of people, come to buy or to see the buying by others. But there were considerations, not all mixed up with stubbornness or indifference, that necessitated the public sales, where strangers and men with long purses came in competition with home people with abounding love for the family slave.

The first man to mount “the Block," in obedience to the command of the cold-hearted, yet witty auctioneer, was Miles Miles, a good-faced fellow of some forty summers. Miles came up with a strong step, but with a heavy heart, with a soul fainting under the gnawing agony imposed upon it. The man was in a terrible state of torture betwixt anxiety and dread. He had had a taste of a vision of the impending fate. The ghoulish speculators had all the morning eyed him and plied him with many questions, which foreboded no good; for Miles, being truthful, had given them a revelation of his true value, a value which in commercial parlance, referring to other commodities, is now written A 1.

Miles's heart was in his throat, as he climbed up in full view of the gaping crowds around; and the slave's eyes were swimming in a great flood of tears, which he tried to wipe away with the back of his hand and the sleeve of his stout shirt, made of homespun flax. The vision before the slave was appalling, and he came very near sinking in the contemplation of an unutterable woe. I think he was the first grown man I ever saw weeping; he was certainly the first grown man I had ever seen whose very soul seemed pierced and broken by the prospect of a terrible agony.

I was but a boy of some ten summers then, a child standing by my father, who, as one of the executors of the will of my grandfather, was well in front on the stage of action in front of the noisy auctioneer. Miles ascended "the Block" with a most pathetic petition, pleading through the tears and the fire of soul,

his heart jumping violently in his throat, and before he could be fully seen by the multitudes around. Here is the language of the cry which he stammered out, which he endeavored to shout into the ears of every one present:

"Now, gentlemens- gentlemens! — I do wants de man de man what buys me -to -to-to buy- -to buy my wife my wife, my wife and my chillun! buy my wife and my chillun!"

My God! Had it come to this? To the separation of man and wife and children!

That was a shaft hurled into my own heart and brain; and realizing instantly something of the touch of misery which must have been in the man's soul, I instinctively caught my father's hand, and clinging to him as I stood under the shadow of the dread and awful possibility, I looked up into his face as my refuge. I saw something bright trickling down his cheek! The fountain in the pure heart of that noble man, it was touched too!

Poor Miles! He was not the only one shedding tears over that sale. The event brought weeping and sorrow to many— alas many! For more than thirty years afterwards, the memory and recital of that story awakened fresh floods in the eyes of others, others who had never known the fate of Miles after the good-bys of that evening. And in the eyes of still others there would come tears-others, children, children who had never beheld the slave, but who listened to his story told at the knee of a grandmother who had never ceased to hold in tearful memory the slave Miles, who had rocked her to sleep in her infancy.

Poor Miles! He could not turn on his heels fast enough to see all who were putting in bids for him. Scarcely had he caught the face of the man who had first spoken when there rang out a fifty dollars better from some one in an opposite direction. Then he turned, but to hear a ten or a twenty dollar higher call elsewhere. Anxiety to catch the face of the prospective master kept him in a very whirl, and every turn of his face brought the same fervid and pathetic appeal,- appeal thrown with all the vigor of his nature into the ears of his auditors: