The only caste in American history whose condition in any way resembled that of the peasant class in Europe was the negro slave of the South. Not only was he subjected to sufferings, hardships, and oppression, but, injected into a civilization in which he found himself an outcast, he was forced to create a racial existence for himself, which, while it adapted elements of the society that ruled him, nevertheless was bound to be distinctive because of a peculiar admixture of savage customs and superstitions, the imperfection of his understanding, and the extraordinary emotional makeup of his character. The negro in his uncivilized way was endowed with the ingenuousness of a child, and the susceptibility to impressions that goes with the untutored mind. He had a childlike, poetic nature, a natural gift of song, an emotionalism and a sentimentality that responded unfailingly to all the pangs of an unjust and cruel existence. The ruthless severing of family ties, the physical pains, the hardships of labor found a direct expression in his music, the idiom of which was partly innate and partly acquired. Add to this the intense religious excitement to which the negro is subject--an emotion which seems to have translated itself with all its elemental power from savage idolatry to Christian worship--and you have a combination which could not but produce a striking result. 'Nowhere save on the plantation of the South could the emotional life which is essential to the development of true folk-song be developed, nowhere else was there the necessary meeting of the spiritual cause and the simple agent and vehicle.'[62]