Thirty-eight years have passed since the Negro was set free and became his own master. By sentimentalists and Negro writers and orators, most of the Negro’s shortcomings are usually charged to slavery, and undoubtedly slavery leaves certain traits which the student can readily detect. But most of the class of writers referred to ignore the fact that the Negro at the close of slavery was in a higher condition of civilization than when he came a savage from the wilds of Africa. Of slavery it may be said that it was the greatest evil that ever befell this country. It kept the sections divided and finally plunged the nation into a devastating civil war. This is indictment enough. But to the Negro it was far from an unmixed evil. This very period of slavery in America had given to him the only semblance of civilization which the Negro race has possessed since the dawn of history. Whatever evils slavery may have entailed upon the Negro, this much may unquestionably be predicted of it: it left him a trained laborer and in good physical condition. He started in on a new era with a large share of friendliness on the part of the South and with the enthusiastic good-will of the North. He had little property, and not more than two or three per cent. were able to read; but he commanded the entire field of labor in the South, while a certain percentage, composed of house-servants, had the knowledge which comes from holding positions of responsibility and from constant association with educated people. When the war closed, among the four millions of Negroes who then inhabited the South, there was, with the exception of the invalids, the cripples, and the superannuated, scarcely an adult who was not a trained laborer or a skilled artisan. In the cotton section they knew how to raise and prepare cotton; in the sugar belt they knew how to grow and grind sugar; in the tobacco, corn, wheat, and hay belts they knew how to raise and prepare for market those crops. They were the shepherds, cattle-men, horse-trainers and raisers. The entire industrial work of the South was performed by them. They were the trained domestic servants—laundresses, nurses, and midwives. They were the carpenters, smiths, coopers, sawyers, wheelwrights, bricklayers, and boatmen. They were the tanners and shoemakers, miners and stonecutters, tailors and knitters, spinners and weavers. Nearly all the houses in the South were built by them. They manufactured most of the articles that were manufactured in the South.