burden from which they saw no means of freeing themselves. To
emancipate the slaves, and thereby to create a population of free
blacks, was generally considered, from the white point of view,
an impossible solution of the problem. The Southerners usually
believed that the African could be tamed only in small groups and
when constantly surrounded by white influence, as in the case of
house servants. Though a few great capitalists had taken up the
idea that the deliberate exploitation of the blacks was the high
prerogative of the whites, the general sentiment of the Southern
people was more truly expressed by Toombs when he said: "The
question is not whether we could be more prosperous and happy
with these three and a half million slaves in Africa, and their
places filled with an equal number of hardy, intelligent, and
enterprising citizens of the superior race; but it is simply
whether, while we have them among us, we would be most prosperous
with them in freedom or in bondage."

The Southern people, in the majority of instances, had no hatred
of the blacks. In the main they led their free, spirited, and
gracious life, convinced that the maintenance of slavery was but
making the best of circumstances which were beyond their control.
It was these Southern people who were to hear from afar the
horrible indictment of all their motives by the Abolitionists and
who were to react in a growing bitterness and distrust toward
everything Northern.

But of these Southern people the average Northerner knew nothing.
He knew the South only on its least attractive side of
professional politics. For there was a group of powerful
magnates, rich planters or "slave barons," who easily made their