I am not surprised at the failure of the negro’s secular education to make him a good and profitable citizen. It is only another illustration of the folly of trying to sharpen the intellect and leave untrained the heart and conscience. The Old South, by contact, example, and precept, put a conscience and a sense of right and honorable living into its slaves. The New South is largely filling them with books. The negro of the Old South was religious, genuinely so, though by reason of his emotional nature his religion was often a matter of feeling. But such religion as he had he got from white teachers and preachers, and it was real and scriptural. It bound him to tell the truth, to lie not, to be sober and honest, and to do no man wrong. How well the negro learned and practiced this old-fashioned religion of slavery, let two facts attest. First, few negroes thus trained in the Old South, so far as the speaker knows, have suffered by rope or fagot for the unnamable crime that so often has marked the negro of the New South. If there be exceptions to this rule, certainly they are exceedingly rare. Secondly, at a time when every white man and even white boys were at the front fighting the battles of the Confederacy, the wives and mothers and children of the soldiers were cared for loyally and devotedly by the negro slaves to an extent unmatched in the history of the world. Such was the honor and conscience of the negro slaves that they watched over the helpless women and children of those who were engaged in a conflict involving their own slavery.