That the negroes desired to be free is plain enough. The fact that they fled in such numbers to our camps shows this. Their failure to revolt must be taken as an indication that their relations with their masters measured on their own instinctive standards were on the whole affectionate. They had the strength to have made an end of the war at a stroke. They were brave enough for such action. That they did not take it after the manner of their kindred of Santo Domingo is the best possible testimony as to the generally sympathetic relation which existed between master and slaves. Of this no better test can be imagined than that which the final stages of the institution afforded. In taking account of the history of the slave in this Union it is not amiss for me to bear testimony as to the spirit with which the body of our slave owners met the singular obligations of their positions. There were here and there base men who abused their trust as masters--some, indeed, who never perceived its existence. But of the very many slave owners whom I can remember I can recall but three who failed to recognize the burden that fate had put upon them and to deal with it much as they dealt with the other cares of their households--conscientiously and mercifully, though often in the rude whacking way in which parents of old dealt with their children; so far as slavery was a household affair, and even where the farm employed no more hands than could be gathered in a house "quarter," the people were commonly subject to an anxious scrutiny as regarded their moral and religious training. Here and there, especially when there were young white men about, the result was the deplorable mixture of the races. There is no question but that this was extensive, though the amount of it is exaggerated. Yet it was common enough to degrade the whites and to make of itself a sufficient reason for ending the institution, however profitable it might otherwise have been. Men of no race are safely to be trusted with such power. The social evil was the heaviest part of the load which the high-minded slave owners had to bear. It was shared in even larger measure by his wife and daughters. How heavy the cross was can only be known to those who remember the conditions of that unhappy time.