There is a universal belief that the Negroes under slavery had no education. I have seen it stated a number of times that it was made a crime by law, in every State of the South, to teach one to read. Such a statement is not true.[60] Teaching them was not encouraged, generally, and such laws existed at one time in four of the States of the South; but they did not exist in Virginia. Several of our Negroes could read, and if it was not the same on most of the plantations, it was at least the same on those of which I had any knowledge. My great-grandmother’s maid used, I have heard, to read to her regularly, and in our family the ladies used to teach the girls as much as they would learn. But apart from book-learning, they had, especially the house-servants, the education which comes from daily association with people of culture, and it was an education not to be despised. Some gentlemen carried on a correspondence about home affairs with their butlers during their absence from home. For instance, I recall hearing that when Mr. Abel P. Upshur was Secretary of the Navy, some gentlemen were at his house, and were discussing at table some public matter, when the butler gave them the latest news about it, saying that he had that morning received a letter from his master. There is an idea that the Negroes were in the state of excitement and agonized expectancy of freedom that the Anglo-Saxon race felt it would have been in under similar circumstances. Much is made, at certain kinds of meetings, of the great part which they contributed toward saving the Union. Discussion of this may be set aside as bordering on the controversial. But it may not be outside of this phase of the matter, and it will throw some light on it to state briefly what was the attitude of the Negro slave population toward the quarrel between the North and the South.