“Yes, it is slander
to say you oppressed them;
Does a man squander
the price of his pelf?
Was it not often that he who
possessed them
Rather was owned
by his servants himself?
Caring for all, as in health
so in sicknesses,
He was their father,
their patriarch chief;
Age’s infirmities, infancy’s
weaknesses
Leaning on him
for repose and relief.
“When you went forth
in your pluck and your bravery,
Selling for freedom
both fortunes and lives,
Where was that prophesied
outburst of slavery
Wreaking revenge
on your children and wives?
Nowhere! you left all to servile
safe keeping,
And this was faithful
and true to your trust;
Master and servant thus mutually
reaping
Double reward
of the good and the just?
“Generous Southerners!
I who address you
Shared with too
many belief in your sins;
But I recant it,—thus,
let me confess you,
Knowledge is victor
and every way wins:
For I have seen, I have heard,
and am sure of it,
You have been
slandered and suffering long,
Paying all Slavery’s
cost, and the cure of it,—
And the great
world shall repent of its wrong.”
I need not say what a riot that honest bit of verse raised among the enthusiasts on both sides. I spoke from what I saw, and soon had reason to corroborate my judgment: for I next paid a visit on my old Brook Green school-friend, Middleton, at his burnt and ruined mansion near Summerville: once a wealthy and benevolent patriarch, surrounded by a negro population who adored him, all being children of the soil, and not one slave having been sold by him or his ancestors for 200 years. According to him, that violent emancipation was ruin all round: in his own case a great farm of happy dependants was destroyed, the inhabitants all dead through disease and starvation, a vast estate once well tilled reverted to marsh and jungle, and himself and his reduced to utter poverty,—all mainly because Mrs. Beecher Stowe had exaggerated isolated facts as if they were general, and because North and South quarrelled about politics and protection. Mrs. Stowe, I hear, has learnt wisdom, as I did,—and now like me does justice to both sides. There is no end to extracts from my journals, if I choose to make them; but I think I will transcribe four stanzas which I gave to Williams Middleton in February 1877, on my departure, as they bring together past and present:—
“Ancient schoolmate
at Brook Green
Half a century
ago
(Nay, the years that roll
between
Count some fifty-eight
or so),—
Oh, the scenes ’twixt
Now and Then,
Life in all its
grief and joys,—
Meeting Now as aged men
Since the Then
that saw us boys!