Let us not misunderstand. These people had no theories on the subject of slavery. The few of them who could in any wise come into the ownership of a negro held to that property possession as resolutely as they would have held to the ownership of a mule or an ox. They were not troubled by any scruples of conscience concerning the ownership of human beings or beset in their minds by any abstractions as to human rights. They no more regarded the negro as the equal of the white man than did their plantation owning neighbors. A negro was in their eyes a "nigger," to be worked to his utmost capacity and mercilessly lashed when guilty of any insolence. They were even less ready than their wealthier neighbors to tolerate any assumption of equality on the part of a negro. They were quicker even than the planters to see and resent such assumptions because their own social status as the superiors of black men was less marked and less secure than that of the planters. A very small concession on that point would have obliterated the only social distinction that these poor cabin dwellers enjoyed.[3] [3] The author had occasion closely to note a like attitude of mind on the part of the cabin dwellers of the Virginia mountains, with whom he was brought into close and constant contact during the war. No rich planter in all the land could have been more insistent than they were upon the social distinction between a white man and a negro or readier than they to resent negro assumption. But these mountain dwellers--these children of poverty and hardship--saw no reason why they should fight for a system which they resented with every impulse of their minds; a system which somehow--they could not reason out how--created the disparity of fortune and social status and personal comfort which existed between themselves and their plantation-owning neighbors. In Missouri the situation was different. There too the population was divided in sentiment but not upon strictly geographical lines, in any pronounced way at least. In Missouri more than anywhere else, the war took on the character of a true civil war. There was a pretense of secession there also, but it represented only a part of the population and amounted only to a declaration in favor of the South by what may or may not have been a majority of the people. It led instantly to war, but it did not distinctly place Missouri either in the list of seceding states or in that of states that adhered to the Union.