The Experience of a Slave
in the Old South
I have in my library close to twenty thousand pages of old Primitive Baptist periodicals, most of it close to a hundred years old. I spend much of my time searching those pages. I do that for two reasons, one, for my own edification, and two, to find material I think our people would be interested in reading. I recently came across the experience of an old slave, as he told it to Elder Sylvester Hassell in 1864. That was right at the hottest part of the Civil War.
I am moved by the old slave’s experience every time I read it; tears come to my eyes, and I wish I could reach across the ages and embrace a dear brother in Christ. I can’t do that, but, I keep reading his experience over and over, and I can almost feel that I am in his presence. Sometimes, I close my eyes and it seems I can see his face as he rejoices in a Saviour’s love.
Paul said something about sitting down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. I have always believed that has to do with the here and now. Fellowship in the church is a more powerful experience than most people have every imagined it to be. It is not bounded by time and space. Fellowship in Christ’s kingdom allows us to reach across the ages and embrace saints who have long since passed from this life. It allows us to read about saints such as this old slave and enjoy what he enjoyed. The Spirit of God in our hearts allows us to transcend the ages, and enjoy his company—almost as if we were in his presence.
Sometimes I read about good meetings at a distance, and I rejoice with those who were there. I enjoy their joy. That is not like being there, but, in a very real sense, I enjoy what they enjoy. I have a passion to acquaint our people with those old writers, and I feel like I have to share this with you.
Our people have never been entirely agreed as to whether we will know each other in heaven. I am just as convinced that we will as some of my brethren are convinced we will not. If I am right, I can’t wait to look up that old ex-slave, and shake his hand, and tell him how his experience has stirred my soul.
The old brother could not read and write. In those days you could get in serious trouble for teaching a Negro to read. Obviously, when he quoted passages, he was reciting what he had heard the white preachers read. He must have had a higher than average intellect to be able to memorize passages simply by hearing them read. I can’t do that. But, then, I am not as sharp as that old brother must have been.
I obviously can read and write, but I am not sure I have ever preached with such power as that old illiterate slave preached. He had to be taught of the Lord. Who else could have taught him?
He has much to say about his owner, and their relationship. We should not imagine that either of them is typical. Not every slave had an owner such as he had, and it is certain that not many people ever had such an experience with the Lord as he did. There is a lot I want to say about both, but rather than get ahead of myself, I will save it until after you have had an opportunity to hear him tell his own experience.
The Article from Elder Hassell
Williamston, N. C, July 9, 1864.
Dear Brother Temple:—I have thought that an account of the Christian experience and ministry of old Brother James Hinton, an aged colored preacher of our faith and order, yet living in this neighborhood, would be interesting or profitable to the readers of the Primitive Baptists.
His truthfulness and sincerity are attested by the uprightness of his character and by the excellence of his teachings. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Matt. 7:20. With his thoughts, his conversation is continually directed towards heaven, where all his treasures lie. Brother James does not know a “letter in the book”; he has evidently derived his information from a Divine source. I give you his account in very nearly his own simple and expressive language:
The old slave’s experience
“I am 83 years old. I was born and raised in Bertie County, N. C. My first master was old man Billie Hinton. I have had five or six owners during my life. They have been kind to me. I have been twice married, and have had twelve children by my first wife and two by my last and present wife. Most of them died in infancy.
“My son Bosen became a Baptist and a preacher, though unlearned like myself. But, with his master and others of my children, he moved many years ago to Mississippi. I do not know the number of my grandchildren and great-grand-children.
“I was twelve years old when first struck under conviction. Up to that time I had been required to do scarcely any work. My old master wanted me to grow and get strong and be of some account. One day I challenged several of my playmates to box with me, declaring that I could out-fist them all together. We had been thus roughly engaged some moments when I heard a voice, loud enough I thought, to be heard four miles, calling out most distinctly, ‘James.’ I looked all around and up, but saw nobody. My arms and wrist at once grew weak, and, at a second similar call, powerless, so I backed away in silence, and sat upon the ground.
“I wondered that the boys didn’t hear the call, but they did not, for they kept thumping me for some time, crying out they had whipped me; but I did not care for it. After they had left me, something seemed to fall from the heavens and drop into my bosom. Ere long it spoke and said, ‘Christ is the way for saving sinners.’ I trembled like a leaf, and wept like a child.
“From that day forward it kept talking to me— gospel. Scripture, justice, and righteousness— continually pointing out the way for me to go. I never was more puzzled—could form no idea what it was. I tried my best to run away from it by moving from place to place, but all in vain—the talking went everywhere I did.
“It kept up with me and annoyed me so that I thought it must be my tongue somehow speaking, and I pulled it out and tried to hold and stop it, but it quickly darted back, and the talking went on worse than ever.
“Well, thought I, what is it? What can it be? I was fond of frolics. The voice told me to stop going. I resolved not to obey it, and continued to go. But at last I was so much troubled that I promised I would not dance, but sit civil and not be chargeable. I did it, but while walking along one day the voice reminded me of my promise, and added, ‘James! I say unto you, if you will go unto such places when not compelled, I threaten you with my dreadful wrath!’
“I shook with terror; I wept as though my heart would break. I never went to any more frolics after that. I kept wondering what could be the matter with me. One time it spoke to me and said, ‘Come out from among them; be ye unspotted from the world, and I will receive you, saith the LORD.’ Then I knew, and not until then, that it was the LORD who had been dealing with me. ‘Come, you, by prayer to me,’ He said.
“I told Him I did not know how to pray. ‘Cry out to Me,’ He replied, ‘through faith for God to have mercy on you, a poor sinner, and I will have mercy.’ I tried to pray this prayer a long time, and thought I had been heard by the Great Master. But one night I went off to pray, in great distress; my tears struck the ground before my knees did. I prayed with a new and true fervency of spirit. And the Lord said to me, ‘James this is the first prayer of yours that I have heard.’
“My deliverance occurred in May, about weeding corn time. I had been abroad over the swamp, and came home early sunset. I went to bed and slept till two or three hours to day, then woke and found myself lying straight and flat of my back, as though I was dead and laid out—a position I never lay in, to my knowledge.
“I was as wide awake as I am now. I felt a weight press down on the middle of my breast. I could not imagine what it was. I looked and saw, hanging from three cords a great body of darkness about two and one-half feet from my breast. I could not tell what it was. A strange thing in my bosom then moved and spoke—‘GOD BE MERCIFUL TO ME A SINNER!’
“I knew what was the matter then. This cry was repeated. I thought I would try to get up and move away from the terrible object, but I found myself unable to stir, and, looking, saw myself right in the middle of the jaws of hell. Oh, what a great ocean! I gave up utterly and confessed: Lord, this is my sins. Would you be merciful, would you be so good, would you be so kind as to pardon and forgive me?
“Oh Lord! I am not able to stand them; they are greater than I can bear. At once a straight line of light came swiftly as a shot, cut down the great body of darkness and slipped it by me. Oh! then there broke light in and about me, as old Brother Paul says, above the brightness of the sun. If brought into this world it would make noonday look like darkness! I thought it was day, but found it was not. I felt as light as any down in your head pillow.
“My old master Hinton was a mild, free, and open- hearted man. He had hundreds of servants, whom he clothed and fed well. He used to sell a thousand barrels of corn a year, and send off hundreds of fattening hogs to Richmond, Petersburg, Suffolk, Smithfield, and Edenton.
“He would put them under my charge, and allow me to bring home the bags of money received in payment. One spring when I was hauling rails he thought I was staying too long in the woods and so he took to watching me. He did not tell me of it, though, until I went to ask for an order to relate to the church what I had faith to believe the Lord had done for my soul.
“‘Jim,’ said he, ‘do you believe He has done anything for your soul?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said I. ‘And I believe it, too,’ he answered; ‘for I have been watching you for years, and often seen you in the woods, after you had loaded your cart, kneel down and pray for yourself and for me, but I would not interrupt you.’
“He told me to take all the rest of that day to talk with him, and that I might go to meeting whenever I pleased, for the time was not his but mine. But I only stayed a while with him and then slipped off to my work, it was such a good day for work.
“The Lord promised me that when I went to give an account of my exercises to the church He would be with me and bless the day. It, indeed, proved to be a lovely day, and the good Lord seemed to manifest His special presence.
“As I was telling of His dealings with my poor soul I could see the gentlemen and ladies trembling, and wiping their eyes with their handkerchiefs. The old elder declared it was useless to examine the candidate any further ‘for,’ said he, ‘we cannot go anywhere he cannot go with us.’ Many said they had not seen such a candidate in thirty years, and after I had gotten through they told me to talk on, for it was greater than the preaching they had heard.
“One great gentleman was struck then and there under conviction. At the beginning of the services he sat away up high in one corner of the meeting-house, but before I finished speaking he was standing by my side, half-bent and trembling. He did not rest until he experienced conversion, and was baptized a year afterwards. Then he used to hail and talk with me every time we met, and we loved each other.
“On the day of my baptism, before I reached the water, the Devil tried to persuade me that if I was baptized I should be drowned; but I did not believe him, and, as always, he turned out to be a liar.
“Some six years after I joined the church the Lord told me He was going to make me a minister of His gospel, and before that year was out, too, no matter how much I might run and hide from it. But I thought surely not yet, and went one Sunday to Billie Thompson’s Quarter, where two colored brethren were expected to preach that day. When I arrived they urged me to go forward and speak to the people, saying that I was better taught of the Spirit than they.
“I wanted to run away, but saw no chance. I felt that I had nothing to say, and trembled like a leaf. But when I arose this hymn at once came to me, and I gave it out:
‘That awful day will surely come,
The appointed hour makes haste,
When I must stand before the Judge,
And pass the solemn test,’ etc.
“I tried to pray, and when I finished that duty, I was as much at a loss what to say as ever. But this text was given me, as well as every word I spoke from it: ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in unto him, and will sup with him and he with me.’ (Rev. 3:20.)
“The strength and warmth of feelings overcame me, and I could not help from weeping while I spoke of the Saviour’s sweet, kind call and welcome to poor, lost sinners unto Him. The people said they never heard better preaching than on that day. They called me ‘preacher’ after that.
“Another text given to me once was, ‘The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears are open unto their cry.’ (Psalm 34:15.)
“And another was, ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit He taketh away; and every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit.’ (John 15:1, 2.)
“By invitation I would often preach, especially on funeral occasions, on porches of gentlemen’s houses, to congregations of two or three hundred persons. After service the gentlemen sometimes would crowd around me and push a book before my face and ask me if I could not read. I assured them that I did not know a letter, and could not tell one if they were going to hang me unless I did.
“They said, ‘How can you preach so, then? We would rather hear you preach than anybody else.’ I told them the LORD was my teacher. Other books can be burned up, but mine is fixed with the seven seals of the Lord. No power can get up or around it. Oh! if any person wants high learning, let him get the grammar of Christ.
“I must not forget to tell you that He once said to me, ‘Always be dutiful to your earthly master, and tell him the truth, and you can ever meet him gladly. And so, by always living in prayer and faith to me, you will at length invite, instead of dreading, death, and face it boldly.’
“This command was put over me. I thought that I never could do enough for Him after that. In the Lord’s direction to me in pursuing His ministry He has said, ‘James, you know my terrors, and shall persuade men to strive for beauty that will never die, for crowns of righteousness that shall never fade, and for wealth that shall never perish. You shall warn sinners to repent.
“‘You shall preach my gospel close by the Tree of Life. I am the Tree of Life.’
“I once prayed to the Lord to take away this talking, and deal with me as with others of His people; and for a while He left me in silence, and did not visit me at all. But as I was going across an old field one day I heard a singing low down at a distance which gradually ascended the heavens and followed, overtook me, and struck me down upon my face.
“‘Ah! James!’ said my inward monitor, ‘you disbelieved the way in which I was bringing you, but I shall not deal with you otherwise. Talk with your brethren, and you will find that they and you witness the same truths, have all drunk of the same spring, and have been born of the same God. I shall talk to you thus, as man to man; you shall feel, hear, and see with your inward ears and eyes, and you shall believe.
“‘These are the great witnesses that shall stand death and face judgment. You shall pray and thank me every Christmas Day and New Year’s Day that your life has been preserved. You shall glorify me. I will be with you, and support and supply you with gospel and scriptures. You shall drink of me and never run dry. I shall keep you here a long time, working for me.
“‘You need not think that pain or that chill will carry you off. You shall know when I call you. I will send six angels when you expire, who shall convey you home to heaven. And then one of your attendant spirits shall exclaim, ‘Fly wide open, ye pearly gates of the New Jerusalem, and let the righteous nation in!
“‘A crown of glory shall be put upon your head, and you shall take your seat at my right hand, and your end shall be peace. Seek you rest above.’
“One day while I was in the field it seemed as though He slipped around in front of me and treated me with such a drink, far sweeter than all the sugar and coffee in the world that, if the taste had remained, I should never more have wanted water.
“During all the night of the shelling (6th of July, 1863) I sat in my door facing the river, assured by the Lord that I should not be harmed. And I was not, though I could see the shells bursting through my walling and firing a neighboring dwelling house.
“The Yankees asked me if I did not want to go with them and have my freedom. I told them I did not want to go from my old home, where I knew my people, off with them, where I knew nobody; and, besides, that I was already free—that I had a freedom that no man could take from me, even the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
“They said they wished they had that freedom (I thought to myself, you won’t get it by throwing bombshells), and they let me alone.
“Oh! this something within me often sings its own praise, prays its own prayers, and preaches its own sermons. As I am working with my hoe in my little field, it often holds a meeting like an Association! And, as it talks to me of the greatness and goodness of GOD.
“I have to stop working and sit down, and my eyes become leaky as a spring, and my tears drop like rain. I never stop thinking of Him—I can never thank Him enough for His blessings. I have tried hard many a year to get a better love for Him, but I find I can only feel this same old first love still.
“Sometimes I rise and sit up in my bed at night, rapturously listening to the marvelous, glorious language of my God! Oh! the teachings of this heavenly voice will never leave me! No thunder or bombshell can drown it. The world and the Devil cannot stop it.
“Old Jim is going to die there! For almost fifty years has he been a mouth for God, laboring for Him and laying off His parables. Poor old fellow, he is most gone, but not afraid to die! for his life is hid with Christ in God, safe from all harm. (Col. 3:3.)
“There’s my dependence. I’m not living here for a peck of meal or pound of meat, but trying to live so as to have something to eat hereafter, that I may not perish there! I long to die the death of the righteous, and have my last end like his! (Num. 23:10.)
“The good Lord sustains me with His comforting word. ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.’ (Rev. 14:13.)
“Our work is not done after God speaks peace to our souls. It is rather begun than ended. We must follow all the directions of the Spirit, try to serve the true and living God aright, to get all of our help from Him—for without Him we can do nothing— endeavor to die in the triumphs of faith.
“Ours is a whispering God. He speaks so softly even if another head be touching yours it cannot hear Him; while He is speaking the tears run down your cheeks. The Spirit is made overseer of the body, to mortify its lusts. We shall carry the warfare with us until death. When we offend, the good Lord whips us well for it, but will never take His loving- kindness from us. (Psalm 89:30-34.).
“We are careful to avoid that place in future. ‘When grace is given to the soul,’ He has said to me, ‘it keeps pushing away sin, and distilling in the soul until it drives out every unclean thing, and in death washes it as pure as gold, and fit for the kingdom of heaven.’
“I could not tell the end of His instruction in a thousand years. We shall all meet at the Great Day. All the judges in the world will be there, and be silent and tremble, while the great Judge only shall speak. There will be no rocks or mountains to hide the wicked from His vengeance. They will all be turned into hell, while the righteous shall be welcomed to life eternal!
“Sometimes I doubt, but deliverance comes and stamps the foundation sure. I feel that I know that God who thunders when He pleases and calms the rolling seas, who directs the whirlwind and rides upon the storm!
“I have thought that I loved my wife and children better than anything else in the world. But now I know that I love my God, His ways and His people better than these and best of all!”
Elder Hassell’s closing remarks
Thus, dear Brother Temple, I have given you an account of some of the exercises of this truly wonderful man of God. His brethren know that his is “the path of the just, which is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” (Rom. 4:18.) Yours in hope of eternal life, S. Hassell.
REMARKS. I was baptized by my father at Williamston, N. C, in Roanoke River, January 11, 1864, and in the same year wrote the above narrative. The testimony of the old brother was a blessing to me then, and is a blessing to me now. I cannot read it now without tears. May the Lord bless it to thousands of the present readers.
The shelling of Williamston by the Federal gunboats on the river, July 6, 1863, was on account of a few Confederate soldiers passing through, who, however, did not shoot at the Federals. The bombardment continued part of the afternoon and all night. Nearly every resident, except a few Old Baptists, left the town. Two houses were burned by the shells, but no person was hurt.
When the marines marched up Main Street next morning they saw my father sitting on his front porch and asked him what he had been doing all night, he replied, “I have been praying for you.” If all men had this spirit there would be no more wars. S. H.
My own observations
The Eastern Establishment, the Educational Elite, and Hollywood types delight in writing about the Old South and slavery. They love to imply there is something inferior about southern people, and they use slavery as their proof.
Fox News does a little better than Network News does in relating the affairs of the day. But they cannot resist the urge to, every now and then, get in their own little digs. Talking heads like Juan Williams spit out words like the South, or the Old South, as if they did not like to soil their mouths with such expressions. They refer to the South, as if it goes without saying, that southern people are racist bigots who are not capable of rational thought when it comes to social questions.
The History Channel is presently running a remake of Alex Haley’s Roots. They go out of their way to show plantation owners as sadistic monsters, who delight in having slaves strung up, and beaten nearly to death for the slightest infraction.
Human nature being what it is, it is inevitable that in any system where some people have power over other people, there will be those who abuse their power. There will be sadistic individuals who delight in making other people suffer.
Historians do not lie when they talk about the sadistic treatment of slaves on the plantations. Such things did happen, and some plantation owners made it a practice to torment their slaves. The treatment of some slaves on some plantations was cruel. Those planters were wicked people and their evil was reflected in their lives. There would not have been so many slaves trying to run away, if that was not the case. Those facts are too well documented to deny.
But historians do lie when they pretend that was the order of the day. They lie when they pretend that southern plantation owners were more cruel than the general population.
Under the legal system of that time, slaves were the property of their masters. But they were valuable property. Except for those who were born into slavery, their owners paid high-dollar for every one of them. And any plantation owner with enough sense to come in out of the rain knows to take care of his property, if he expects to get a return on his investment.
For 150 years, historians have mocked the South and painted our people in the darkest way. But it does not make common sense to think the southern plantations were such torture chambers as establishment types make them out to be.
Running a huge plantation was an expensive operation. Land and slaves and equipment cost money, lots of money, much of it borrowed money. And, like other people, plantation owners liked to live the way other planters lived. Many of them lived beyond their means.
Any workforce will do whatever you can get them to do. A slave had no incentive to be more productive than he had to be. He had no incentive to acquire new skills; it would not benefit him. It does not take a genius to figure out that the surest way to bankruptcy is to so alienate your workforce that they cease to be productive. There are too many ways to gum up the operation, too many ways for equipment to fail.
We should not get the idea that Old Jim was describing all plantation owners. That is not possibly the case. Some people are just mean and abusive, and some plantation owners were mean and abusive.
But he does point out that he had belonged to several masters, and they had all been kind and gentle with him. He says they fed and clothed their slaves well. They had all housed and fed him. He did not have to drink branch water with his breakfast. He talks about his coffee—and sugar to sweeten it. He had a down pillow. Not many people in today’s affluent America have down pillows; most of us settle for foam rubber substitutes. He had five or six owners and if there were other plantations that were torture chambers, he obviously did not know anything about them.
I wish that every time anybody watches one of those propaganda pieces on television that portray the Old South as a land of sadistic monsters, they would take a moment to read our friend’s experience, and realize that what they have seen on television is just that—propaganda.
Before we close, we need to take a brief look at some of the facts the Elitists choose to ignore. When they talk about the Civil War, and the way slaves were mistreated, they carefully avoid talking about the way Northern industrialists abused their own people.
Historians like to trumpet Andrew Carnegie as one of the great industrialists who built America. They are not so quick to point out that he required the employees in his steel mills to work 12 to 14 hours a day six days a week for starvation wages. Working such long hours, so exhausted they were more asleep than awake, and working around blistering hot blast furnaces, it was inevitable that many of them would be killed or maimed for life. If they were injured, they were on their own. The mill owners had no real investment in any of them. At the end of each week he paid them their meager wages for the work they had done that week. That was the only investment he had in any of them. They had earned far more than they had ever been paid, and now that they had been injured and no longer able to work, they were of no more use to the mill owners.
In addition to the dangers of the mills, Carnegie and the other industrialists were notoriously careless in other ways about the safety of their people.
One example is the Johnstown Flood. Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Carnegie’s partner, maintained a huge earthen dam above Johnstown, Pennsylvania. It was known for years that it was a hazard to the town below, but Frick refused to do the necessary maintenance. He had a palatial hunting lodge on the lake where he entertained his super rich friends. And entertaining his rich friends was more important than the safety of the people in the town below.
Finally, the inevitable happened. The dam failed; the town was washed away, and over 2000 people drowned. To be sure, Frick did not bring on the rain that caused the dam to fail, but he knew the dam was bound to fail, and it did not matter. After all, what did the lives of a few townspeople matter, when the celebrating and carousing of his rich friends were at stake.
Frick refused to take responsibility for the deaths he caused; the courts agreed with Frick, and the families of those who drowned did not receive a penny for their loss.
Our bigoted Elitist historians record all the details of the Johnstown Flood, but they are careful not to mention Henry Clay Frick’s complicity in the deaths of 2000 innocent people— not when they are talking about slavery and the South.
Our bigoted historians will be hard pressed to find a time when any plantation owner or group of plantation owners sacrificed 2000 of their slaves—all in the name of having a good time.
No plantation owner would have risked any such thing. They had a huge investment in their slaves. The loss of a large number of slaves would have bankrupted any plantation owner. With such a huge investment it was critical that he keep his slaves reasonably healthy and as content as possible under the circumstances.
With the Northern industrialists it was a different matter altogether. The only investment they had in their employees was their week’s pay, and they had already gotten more than their money’s worth before they paid that. If one of their employees was hurt or killed, there were plenty more where he came from.
Northern factory owners liked to work children, because their little hands would go where adult hands would not go. If those tiny hands were caught in the machinery and mangled for life, well that was just one of the hazards of the job.
If the children of slaves were required to work as soon as they were old enough to swing a hoe, at least they were out in the fresh air, not in stifling hot mills. And they were not nearly so likely to be killed or mangled in dangerous machinery.
The mines of that day were very much like the mills. The miners were required to work 12 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, for very little pay. Often, the company built tall fences around the camp with guards to control who came into the camp and who went out. Mining camps were often more like concentration camps than workplaces.
The workers were paid next to nothing, and that was in company scrip, which was worthless except at the company store. By the time they paid the exorbitant prices at the company store, they had nothing left. They might as well have been slaves. At the end of the week they had no money left to pay for moving away. The mines were often located far from any town. It was much too far for any destitute miner and his family to walk out carrying a few possessions with them.
When they are talking about the Old South and slavery, our bigoted Elitist historians avoid talking about events like the time when the miners at John D. Rockefeller’s Ludlow mine went on strike.
It was in the dead of winter and Rockefeller sent strikebreakers to Ludlow, and evicted the miners from the company housing.
The union brought in tents for the miners. But a tent is poor protection in the heart of a bitter Colorado winter.
The company placed snipers on the ridge over the tent dwellings to take pot shots at the miners and their families. Company guards would often take bets on who could get the closest to one of the miners or his family without actually hitting him.
In the night, company goons would drive their armored car through the camp, armed with a machine gun and firing into the air. Sometimes they would shoot through the tents. The miners would dig deep holes in the ground beneath the tents. They slept in those holes to avoid the bullets. Finally, in the dead of winter, the company goons burned the tent city to the ground, sometimes with the miners, their families, and all their possessions inside.
Finally, Rockefeller’s goons leveled the entire tent city, and left the strikers standing in the snow with no idea where they would sleep or where they would find their next meal.
The miners had no recourse, not when the sheriff and the governor were in the pocket of the mine owners. Our bigoted historians and educators would be hard pressed to find worse treatment on the plantations. Where is there any report of plantation owners using their slaves for target practice?
Workers in those Northern mills were forced to work long hours around dangerous machinery. When a worker is so tired he hardly knows where he is, it is more than possible he will be killed or maimed for life. Then after they worked until they were too old and too infirm to do the job, they were let go. If they did not have a family to take them in, they were in deep trouble.
The slaves on those plantations had a hard way to go, but their owners did not treat them that badly. When they were too old to do the job, they were allowed to live out their days in the quarters, with the other younger slaves seeing to their needs. For all their faults, the plantation owners treated their aged slaves far better than Northern industrialists treated their day laborers.
When they came to die, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie were three of the richest men on the planet. They got that way by working their people for next to nothing. While their employees were freezing and starving, they lived like emperors in their palatial mansions.
Then they took much of the money they had withheld from their people, and built magnificent monuments to themselves. Carnegie built more than 2000 well endowed libraries all over the world— with the Carnegie name on every one of them. Rockefeller financed national parks and saw to it that his name would be forever connected to the parks.
Far from being monuments to their generosity, those should be permanent reminders of how they got the money in the first place— how they abused and virtually enslaved their employees. How they cast them aside—like worn out machinery— when they were no longer of any use. And they would be exactly that, if our Elitist historians would tell the whole truth.
We have given a few examples of the double standard Establishment historians use in talking about the South. A huge volume could be provided. But if these examples do not prove the point, a thousand pages would not do any better.
THE END