of discussion with a Rebel:

"Wall, what air you'uns down heah, a-fightin' we'uns foh?"

As I had answered this question several hundred times, I had found the
most extinguishing reply to be to ask in return:

"What are you'uns coming up into our country to fight we'uns for?"

Disdaining to notice this return in kind, the old man passed on to the
next stage:

"What are you'uns takin' ouah niggahs away from us foh?"

Now, if negros had been as cheap as oreoide watches, it is doubtful
whether the speaker had ever had money enough in his possession at one
time to buy one, and yet he talked of taking away "ouah niggahs," as if
they were as plenty about his place as hills of corn. As a rule, the
more abjectly poor a Southerner was, the more readily he worked himself
into a rage over the idea of "takin' away ouah niggahs."

I replied in burlesque of his assumption of ownership:

"What are you coming up North to burn my rolling mills and rob my comrade
here's bank, and plunder my brother's store, and burn down my uncle's
factories?"

No reply, to this counter thrust. The old man passed to the third
inevitable proposition: