One reason which may be mentioned for the good-will that continued to exist during this crisis, and has borne its part in preserving kindly relations ever since, is that, among the slave-owning class, there was hardly a child who had not been rocked in a colored mammy’s arms and whose first ride had not been taken with a Negro at his horse’s head; not one whose closest playmates in youth had not been the young Negroes of the plantation. The entire generation which grew up during and just after the war grew up with the young Negroes, and preserved for them the feeling and sympathy which their fathers had had before them. This feeling may hardly be explained to those who have not known it. Those who have known it will need no explanation. It possibly partakes somewhat of a feudal instinct; possibly of a clan instinct. It is not mere affection; for it may exist where affection has perished and even where its object is personally detested. Whatever it is, it exists universally with those who came of the slave-holding class in the South, who knew in their youth the Negroes who belonged to their family, and, no matter what the provocation, they can no more divest themselves of it than they can of any other principle in their lives. FOOTNOTES: [1] See chapter on “The Disfranchisement of the Negro.” [2] The Negro population in 1860 was, in the Slave States, 4,215,614; in the other States it was 226,216, a total of 4,441,830. In 1900 the Negro population in the Southern States and the District of Columbia was 8,081,270. [3] By the census of 1781, there were in Virginia 12,866 free Negroes. [4] See Randolph’s “Life of Jefferson,” Vol. I, pp. 22-24. [5] “Life of William Lloyd Garrison,” Vol. II, p. 35, and _Liberator_, No. 5, p. 197. [6] An illustration of this may be found in T. W. Dwight’s paper on the Dred Scott case in Johnson’s Universal Cyclopedia, where he refers to the fact that, in the Dred Scott case, Chief Justice Taney’s learned opinion, reviewing historically the attitude of the people toward the African race at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, has been generally taken as giving his own opinion. Even the late senior Senator from Massachusetts was recently reported as quoting this as Chief Justice Taney’s opinion. But see Tyler’s “Life of Chief Justice Taney.” [7] Horace Greeley’s old paper, the _New York Tribune_, has recently, in commenting on a statement made by the successor of Henry Ward Beecher, felt compelled to declare that the war was primarily undertaken to save the Union and not to emancipate slaves. But the strongest single piece of testimony is Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greeley of Aug. 22, 1862. Lincoln’s paramount object, as he boldly avowed in this letter of August 22, 1862, to Horace Greeley, was “to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery.”—Cong. Globe, 2d Session, 37th Congress, Pt. II, p. 1154.