Anziques, “the cruellest Cannibals in the world; for they do not onely eat their Enemies, but their friends and Kinsfolk. And that they may be sure not to want these Dainties, they have shambles of man’s flesh, as in other parts of Beef and Mutton. So covetous withall, that if their Slaves will yield but a penny more when sold joynt by joynt than if sold alive, they will cut them out, and sell them upon the shambles. Yet with these barbarous qualities they have many good ... of so great fidelity to their masters and to those which trust them, that they will rather choose to be killed than either abuse the trust, or betray their Masters. For that cause more esteemed by the Portugals than other Slaves.” So even the most bloodthirsty possessed potentially the quality of faithfulness, which when he was removed from his natural environment--where for thousands of years he had not progressed--made all his later development possible, and which aside from the cases where there has been an infusion of white or Indian blood, is largely responsible for what the best type of American negro is to-day. It was this quality, fostered by care and kindness, that has filled Southern tradition with touching and oftentimes heroic incidents of the slave’s devotion. When the old differences of Puritan and Cavalier, under other guises, called men to arms, it was to the fidelity of these blacks that the Southerner trusted wife, children, and home. That this trust was seldom violated is sufficient encomium for master and slave. Under the régime established in many places, after emancipation had converted the “slave from a well-fed animal into a pauperized man” (Huxley), when he was incited to open rebellion and nameless atrocities, to what sorrows would the desolated South have been subjected, had the old status of master and slave been different? Had the South been guilty of the charges laid to her door, despite Klu-Klux Klans and other precautions, the negro’s temper would have been much the same as that of the French canaille, who during the Commune “drank blood to vomit crime.” They had shown, in the San Domingo insurrections, that revenge lay within their nature. CHAPTER II EARLY LEGISLATION AGAINST SLAVERY