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further North were so undisguised, that, with the partial
education that existed there, it must have been very much
a matter of choice whether many remained with their
masters or not. The difficulty of removing clandestinely
the wives and children doubtless was the principal ob-
stacle to a more general exodus. But in the cotton States
and especially among the rice plantations of the seaboard of
South Carolina, where there were but few whites to many thous-
ands of blacks, and an ability to read was almost unknown,
not only was there scarcely any knowledge of what was being
done elsewhere in their interests, but there seemed also no des-
ire on their part for their condition to be changed.

Our butler or principal houseservant, a very worthy man who
still lives (1892) once told me that for years there were ru-
mors among the slaves of an eventual emancipation, and, on
the other hand, an elderly man, who when a slave was owned
by one of my neighbors on Cooper river, told me shortly after his
freedom that, when the federal officers came to the plantation
where he was he was off in the woods, and when it was an-
nounced to him on returning that he was a free man thence-
forward he considered it at first an idle joke.

Another view of the matter is that all the slaves at the South
having been born in slavery, except for a few native Africans
imported by the yacht Wanderer in 58 or 59, they regarded
that condition as their normal one, and perhaps the des-
ire for a life of freedom was confined to only a few of the young
and adventurous, who in the cotton States sometimes man-
aged to make their escape in the holds of vessels sailing
from the seaports. That a longing for freedom was a general
one was disproved by the experiences of the John Brown raid.
This occurred near the dividing line between Virginia and
Pennsylvania, where there should have been, according to
the accepted belief, many slaves ready for an uprising.
To the surprise however of Brown and his confederates the
number of blacks who joined them was extremely small.

The "underground railroad" as it was called,
which was an organised system existing at the North for enticing
slaves out of the border southern States and hurrying them on to Canada
probably produced a good many escapes. During one of my visits
to Niagara I met several of these on the British side and those
to whom I spoke were from Kentucky. They had been assisted doubtless
in leaving their masters and they seemed puzzled at the difficulties
of making a living in such a cold region. During the summer when
I saw them they were managing to earn a living out of the con-
stant stream of tourists. It was the winter that they dreaded.

Our French maid servant Victoire had no fondness
for negroes, and the relations between her and the house servants
were as a rule somewhat strained. She usually had a girl to
partly wait on her by carrying her meals to her room every day
from our dinner table, and while not otherwise employed the
same girl would be learning to sew under her direction. She was
a strict disciplinarian and when the girl misbehaved and required
correction she was quite equal to its thorough administration.