With this view of the question Jackson was in perfect agreement.  “I am very confident,” says his wife, “that he would never have fought for the sole object of perpetuating slavery...He found the institution a responsible and troublesome one, and I have heard him say that he would prefer to see the negroes free, but he believed that the Bible taught that slavery was sanctioned by the Creator Himself, who maketh all men to differ, and instituted laws for the bond and free.  He therefore accepted slavery, as it existed in the South, not as a thing desirable in itself, but as allowed by Providence for ends which it was not his business to determine.”

It may perhaps be maintained that to have had no dealings with “the accursed thing,” and to have publicly advocated some process of gradual emancipation, would have been the nobler course.  But, setting aside the teaching of the Churches, and the bitter temper of the time, it should be remembered that slavery, although its hardships were admitted, presented itself in no repulsive aspect to the people of the Confederate States.  They regarded it with feelings very different from those of the abolitionists, whose acquaintance with the condition they reprobated was small in the extreme.  The lot of the slaves, the Southerners were well aware, was far preferable to that of the poor and the destitute of great cities, of the victims of the sweater and the inmates of fever dens.  The helpless negro had more hands to succour him in Virginia than the starving white man in New England.  The children of the plantation enjoyed a far brighter existence than the children of the slums.  The worn and feeble were maintained by their masters, and the black labourer, looking forward to an old age of ease and comfort among his own people, was more fortunate than many a Northern artisan.  Moreover, the brutalities ascribed to the slave-owners as a class were of rare occurrence.  The people of the South were neither less humane nor less moral than the people of the North or of Europe, and it is absolutely inconceivable that men of high character and women of gentle nature should have looked with leniency on cruelty, or have failed to visit the offender with something more than reprobation.  Had the calumnies* (* Uncle Tom’s Cabin to wit.) which were scattered broadcast by the abolitionists possessed more than a vestige of truth, men like Lee and Jackson would never have remained silent.  In the minds of the Northern people slavery was associated with atrocious cruelty and continual suffering.  In the eyes of the Southerners, on the other hand, it was associated with great kindness and the most affectionate relations between the planters and their bondsmen.  And if the Southerners were blind, it is most difficult to explain the remarkable fact that throughout the war, although thousands of plantations and farms, together with thousands of women and children, all of whose male relatives were in the Confederate armies, were left entirely to the care of the negroes, both life and property were perfectly secure.