homes, and here grew their posterity surrounding themselves with wealth, comforts, and all the luxuries and elegances of an elevated civilization.  Surrounded in these homes with domestic slaves reared in them, and about them, who came at their bidding, and went when told, but who were carefully regarded, sustained, and protected, and who felt their family identity, and were happy, served affectionately, and with willing alacrity, the master and his household.  In the midst of scenes and circumstances like these grew women in all that constitutes nobility of soul and sentiment, delicacy, intelligence, and refined purity, superior to any it has ever been my fortune to meet on earth.

Here in these palatial homes was the hospitality of princes.  It was not the hospitality of pride or ostentation, but of the heart; the welcome which the soul ungrudgingly gives, and which delights and refines the receiver.  It is the welcome of a refined humanity, untainted with selfishness, and felt as a humane and duly bound tribute to civilization and Christianity; such hospitality as can only belong to the social organization which had obtained in the community from its advent upon this great country.

The independence of the planter’s pursuit, the institution of domestic slavery, and the form and spirit of the Government, all conduce to this.  The mind is untrammelled and the soul is independent, because subservient neither to the tyrannical exactions of unscrupulous authority, or the more debasing servility of dependence upon the capricious whims of petty officials, or a monied aristocracy.  Independently possessing the soil and the labor for its cultivation, with only the care necessary to the comforts and necessities of this labor, superadded to those of a family, they were without the necessity of soliciting or courting favors from any one, or pandering to the ignorant caprices of a labor beyond their control.  Independence of means is the surest guarantee for independence of character.  Where this is found, most private and most public virtues always accompany it.  Truth, sincerity, all the cardinal virtues are fostered most where there is most independence.  This takes away the source of all corruption, all temptation.  This seeks dependence, and victimizes its creatures to every purpose of corruption and meanness.

Under the influences of the institutions of the South, as they were, there was little of the servile meanness so predominant where they were not, and the lofty and chivalrous character of the Southern people was greatly owing to these institutions, and the habits of the people growing out of them.  The slave was a class below all others.  His master was his protector and friend; he supplied his wants and redressed his wrongs, and it was a point of honor as well as duty to do so; he was assured of his care and protection, and felt no humility at his condition.  The white man, without means, was reminded that, though