“Yes; come in, gentlemen, and let us have a free and friendly discussion,” said Mr. Travilla.

Boyd and Conly at once accepted the invitation, but Foster, reining in his horse in the shade of a tree at the gate, said, “No, thank you; I don’t care to alight, can talk from the saddle as well as anyway.  I call you scalawags, Messrs. Dinsmore and Travilla, because though natives of the South, you have turned against her.”

“Altogether a mistake,” observed Travilla.

“I deny the charge and call upon you to prove it,” said Mr. Dinsmore.

“Easy task; you kept away and took no part in our struggle for independence.”

“That is we (I speak for Travilla as well as myself) had no share in the effort to overthrow the best government in the world, the hope of the down-trodden and oppressed of all the earth a struggle which we foresaw would prove, as it has, the almost utter destruction of our beloved South.  They who inaugurated secession were no true friends to her.”

“Sir!” cried Boyd, with angry excitement, “ours was as righteous a cause as that of our Revolutionary fathers.”

Mr. Dinsmore shook his head.  “They fought against unbearable tyranny; and that after having exhausted every other means of obtaining a redress of their grievances; and we had suffered no oppression at the hands of the general government.”

“Hadn’t we?” interrupted Foster fiercely.  “Were the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law carried out by the North? didn’t some of the Northern States pass laws in direct opposition to it? and didn’t Yankee abolitionists come down here interfering with our institutions and enticing our negroes to run away, or something worse?”

“Those were the acts of private individuals, and individual states, entirely unsanctioned by the general government, which really had always rather favored us than otherwise.”

“But uncle,” said Conly, “there would have been no secession but for the election of Lincoln, an abolition candidate.”

“And who elected him? who but the Democrats of the South?  They made a division in the Democratic party, purposely to enable the Republicans to elect their man, that they might use his election as a pretext for secession.”

A long and hot discussion followed, each one present taking more or less part in it.  It was first the causes of the war, then the war itself; after that the reconstruction policy of Congress, which was bitterly denounced by Foster and Boyd.

“Never was a conquered people treated so shamefully!” cried the former, “it is a thing hitherto unheard of in the history of the world, that gentlemen should be put under the rule of their former slaves.”