She was called a free State, but her negroes were not free men.  Under her laws they could only remain in the State by giving bonds for good behavior.  Any one employing negroes, not so bonded, was liable to a fine of one hundred dollars.  They could not vote, of course.  They could not testify in a case in which a white man was interested.  They could not send their children to schools which they helped to support.  The only thing they could do “like a white man” was to pay taxes.

The prejudice against the poor creatures in Ohio was much stronger than that they encountered on the other side of the Ohio River in the slave State of Kentucky.  Here—­in Kentucky—­they were property, and they generally received the care and consideration that ownership ordinarily establishes.  The interest of the master was a factor in their behalf.  In many instances there was genuine affection between owner and slave.  “How much better off they would be if they only had good masters,” was a remark I very often heard in Ohio, as the negroes would go slouching by with hanging heads and averted countenances.  There is no doubt that at this time the physical condition of the blacks was generally much better in slavery than it was in freedom.  What stronger testimony to the innate desire for liberty—­what Byron has described as “The eternal spirit of the chainless mind”—­than the fact that slaves who were the most indulgently treated, were constantly escaping from the easy and careless life they led to the hostilities and barbarities of the free States, and they never went back except under compulsion.

    “O carry me back to old Virginy,
    To old Virginy’s shore,”

was the refrain of a song that was very popular in those days, and which was much affected by what were called “negro minstrels.”  It was assumed to express the feelings of colored fugitives from bondage when they had time to realize what freedom meant in their cases, but I never heard the words from the lips of a man who had lived in a state of servitude.

I have elsewhere referred to the fact that women were often the most bitter in their denunciations of the Abolitionists.  In the neighborhood in which I passed my early days was a lady who was born and raised in the North, and who probably had no decided sentiment, one way or the other, on the slavery question; but who about this time spent several months in a visit to one of the slave States.  She came back thoroughly imbued with admiration for “the institution.”  She could not find words to describe the good times that were enjoyed by the wives and daughters of the slave-owners.  They had nothing to do except to take the world easy, and that, according to her account, they did with great unanimity.  The slaves, were, she declared, the happiest people in the world, all care and responsibility being taken from their shoulders by masters who were kind enough to look out for their wants.