gton's childhood? By way of
reply, take this vivid word-picture from Mr Casey's _Two Years on the
Farm of Uncle Sam_, which was published in the decade of our hero's
birth:--

"The slaves are all that I had imagined, coming up to the dark outline
of fancy with a terrible precision. We put in to wood at one of these
places, and for the first time I saw these hewers of wood and drawers of
water. A party of us went on shore to shoot; some distance in the wood
we found two men, three women and two boys; there were twenty in all on
this farm. The women were dressed in a rough, shapeless, coarse
garment, buttoned at the back, with a sort of trousers of the same
material, rough shoes and stockings, the upper garment reaching nearly
to the ankle; a kind of cloth, like a dirty towel, was wound round the
head. One of the women drove an ox-team; she had a large and powerful
whip, with which, and a surprising strength, she belaboured and tugged
the unwieldy team with great dexterity. The other woman had five
children, and assisted in loading the wood; the younger, about sixteen
years of age, had one child, and appeared to do nothing. The women, it
seemed to me, worked harder than the men. I observed the almost complete
absence of memory in the elder woman; she could not remember where she
had left the link-chain or goad-whip, though but a few minutes out of
her hand. I must confess that, looking on that labour-crooked group, I
felt a dislike, strong and definite, to that system which takes away
even the hope of improvement, crushing down the principle of self-esteem
in the man, until it reaches the passive and unambitious existence of
the oxen which he drives. And looking on those women, negroes though
they were, so unnaturally masculine, so completely unsexed, so far
removed from all those attributes with which the name of woman is
associated, I felt that no reason based on an asserted right, no fiction
of argument, could stand in my judgment but as dust in the balance when
the question is whether a human being--no matter of what colour, whether
an Indian or an African sun may have burned upon him--should possess the
liberty or right of securing his own happiness to the extent of his
ability. Then their state, their look, bodies, mind and manner were so
many self-evident arguments against the system, which no
representations, however plausible, could refute; and all that I had
listened to from Southerners on the voyage disappeared