a martyr.

But the Afro-American, commonly called a "nigger" in the South, is
neither the one nor the other. He is often as worthless as the "white
trash" he so scornfully despises, and he is often all that the most
exacting could expect, when his surroundings and disadvantages are taken
into consideration. Physiologists tell us that man is very largely what
others make him, many going so far as to say that character and
disposition are three parts hereditary and one part environment. If this
is so, a good deal of allowance should be made. It is less than 300
years since the first negroes were brought over to this country, and it
is but little more than thirty years since slavery was abolished. Hence,
from both the standpoints of descent and environment, the negro is at a
great disadvantage, and he should hardly be judged by the common
standard.

It was in the year 1619 that a Dutch ship landed a cargo of negroes from
Guinea, but that was not really the first case of slavery in this
country. Prior to that time paupers and criminals from the old world had
voluntarily sold themselves into a species of subjection, in preference
to starvation and detention in their own land; but this landing in 1619
seems to have really introduced the colored man into the labor world and
market of America.

We need not trace the history of the negro as a slave at any length.
That he was occasionally abused goes without saying, but that his
condition was approximately as bad as a majority of writers have
attempted to prove is not so certain. It was the policy of the slave
owner to get as much work out of his staff as he possibly could. He knew
from experience that the powers of human endurance were necessarily
limited, and that a man could not work satisfactorily when he was sick
or hungry. Hence, even on the supposition that all slave owners were
without feeling, it is obvious that self-interest must have impelled
them to keep the negro in good health, and to prevent him from losing
strength from hardship and want.

On some plantations the lot of the slave was a hard one, but on others
there was very little complaining or cause for complaint. Thousands of
slaves were better off by far than they have been subsequent to
liberation, and it is a fact that speaks volumes for the much discussed
and criticized slaveholders, that numbers of emancipated slaves refused
to accept their freedom, while many more, who went away delighted at the
remo