Class 
 Book- 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 
A DEAD ISSUE 
 
 AND THE 
 
 LIVE ONE 
 
 BY 
 
 B. F. VAN METER, Sr. 
 
 LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY 
 
 Printed by 
 THE BRADLEY & GILBERT CO. 
 
 INCORPORATED 
 
 Louisville, Kentucky 
 
 1913 
 

 FEB II 1914 
 
 ©CI.A:<G19;j6 
 
"We should gather inspiration from this world in which we live, 
 And discern among its beauties all the meaning God would give. 
 What though men of deepest learning, versed in sciences and art 
 Do proclaim a new religion in which Jesus has no part? 
 Human nature, striving, longing, yearning, feeling after God, 
 Finds its only path of safety where those ancient feet have trod." 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 It would be an all-sufficient reason for writing this book, to 
 draw the attention of the rising generation and of those who may 
 follow to the Truth; and thus counteract the erroneous, false, and 
 harmful impressions which are continually being made by school 
 teachers and others upon the rising generation. The twaddle and 
 silly sentiment which is thus used as argument against the institu- 
 tion of slavery could as well, or better, be used to oppose the 
 slaughter of beasts or animals, birds and fishes, for the sustenance 
 of man, and the burdensome labor imposed upon horses and all 
 domestic animals. God, the Almighty and infinitely wise Creator of 
 all things, has given man no more authority or right in His Holy 
 word and Testament for these last named things than he has to pos- 
 sess and use slaves ; and His infinite wisdom is as well displayed in 
 His provision for the institution of slavery as for food and raiment 
 or the institution of marriage and all the provisions which He made 
 for the use and benefit of the human beings which He created as 
 the crowning act of His creation of this world, that they should have 
 dominion and control over it and all that is on it and in it. We 
 are confident that we find abundant testimony in God's Word as 
 contained in the Old and New Testaments to convince all who ac- 
 cept this book as inspired and true, that "Bible Slavery" was as 
 Divinely instituted as any of the other institutions and precepts set 
 forth in that holy and inspired Word, and besides this and in con- 
 nection with it, furnish a subject of sufficient magnitude and im- 
 portance to enlist the most serious and earnest thought, even of 
 the greatest living Statesmen, and all who have an earnest desire for 
 the welfare of mankind. 
 
 NOTE — I am indebted to a pamphlet published from two or 
 three lectures delivered by Rev. Stuart Robinson, D. D., of Louis- 
 ville, Ky,, while sojourning in Canada in 1862-3, and there perhaps 
 more from necessity than choice while the abominable old unpleas- 
 antness was raging furiously in this country. He was one of the 
 most learned and distinguished divines then living. I have drawn 
 on this pamphlet freely for scripture testimony which he had al- 
 ready collected in proof of the sentiments and views which I enter- 
 tain and have expressed in this book. 
 
A DEAD ISSUE. 
 
 We may say that the dead have an inalienable right to a cor- 
 rect epitaph; Justice and Truth demand this, and we believe that 
 no one at this late day will deny that African slavery as it existed 
 in America fifty years ago is a dead issue and therefore entitled to 
 a true and correct history as much for the benefit of future genera- 
 tions as in justice to the slave-owners who will soon have all gone 
 the way of this subject proposed for discussion. 
 
 To begin with, I do not propose to discuss this subject with 
 any person who is not willing to admit that the Bible as contained in 
 the Old and New Testament is the inspired Word of God and there- 
 fore true, wise, and righteous ; then whatever in regard to this sub- 
 ject can be made to accord with the inspired Word of God should be 
 accepted as true and correct, whether it accords with the prejudice 
 passions, and predilections of the reader or not. 
 
 "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and all such writings have long since 
 served their purpose and should pass to their reward and receive 
 their just deserts, while history should be just, true, frank and 
 honest. To make anything to stand the test and storms of time a 
 firm foundation is needed and "How firm a foundation for saints of 
 the Lord" can be found by searching in God's Holy Word ; then let 
 us find what is the "thus saith the Lord" in regard to this subject 
 and abide by that, whatever it may be. To do this, if need be, we 
 can go back to the days of Noah, soon after he came out of the Ark 
 and learn what this prophet of God said in Genesis. First, let us 
 see what is said of Noah in the 6 : 9, 10. "Noah was a just man, and 
 perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. And Noah 
 begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth." Then further on (9:22) 
 "And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, 
 and told his two brothers without." And then the 24th verse: 
 "And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son 
 had done unto him. And he said of Canaan, 'a servant of servants 
 shall he be unto his brethren.' " 26th : "And he said, 'Blessed be 
 the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant.'" 27th 
 verse : "God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents 
 of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant." 
 
 Now, here in the prophesy of Noah, we see that it was the pur- 
 pose of God revealed at the very origin of the present race of men 
 
that one portion of the race should be doomed to servitude ; and that 
 portion, as we shall see further on, are from those of heathenish de- 
 gradation and devil-worship. 
 
 What is claimed from Noah's prophesy is that this purpose of 
 God revealed at the very origin of the present human race furnishes 
 a clue to the interpretation of the subsequent revelations of His will 
 both in His Word and in the history of His providence as revealed 
 in His Holy Word. And then in Genesis 12: 16 we find these 
 words : "And he (Pharoah) entreated Abram well for her (Sarah's) 
 sake, and he (Abram) had sheep and oxen, and he-asses, and m.en- 
 servants, and maid-servants, and she-asses, and camels." So this 
 Abraham, a large slave-owner, was chosen by Jehovah for the earth- 
 ly head of his Church, and God made a covenant with this slave- 
 owner. In the 20: 14, "Abimeleck took sheep and oxen, and men- 
 servants, and women-servants and gave them unto Abraham." We 
 find in the 14: 14: "And when Abraham heard that his brother 
 was taken captive he armed his trained servants born in his own 
 house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan." 
 Then again read in the 24: 34, 35: "And he said, I am Abraham's 
 servant, and the Lord hath blessed my master greatly and he has 
 become great, and He hath given him flocks and herds and silver 
 and gold, and men-servants, and maid-servants, and camels, and 
 asses." And if you will read all of this chapter you can but be 
 convinced, if you are not already, that Abraham, this greatly favor- 
 ed man of God, was a large slave-owner. It is just as true of Job, 
 as we see from Job 1 : 15, 16, 17. "And the Sabeans fell upon them 
 and took them away; yea they have slain the servants with the edge 
 of the sword and I only am escaped alone to tell thee" While he 
 was yet speaking there came also another and said, "the fire of God is 
 fallen from Heaven and hath burned up the sheep and servants and 
 consumed them, and I only am escaped alone to tell thee." While yet 
 speaking there came another also, and said, "The Chaldeans made 
 out three bands and fell upon the camels and have carried them away, 
 yea, and slain the servants with the edge of his sword, and I only 
 am escaped alone to tell thee." And then when Job was in the depths 
 of his afflictions, see the 31: 13: "If I did despise the cause of my 
 man-servant or maid-servant when they contended with me." With- 
 out producing any further testimony there can be no more doubt of 
 Job's having been an extensive slave-owner than there is of Abra- 
 ham ; and after Job's affliction when he returned again to prosperity 
 and affluence he owned more slaves than he had owned before, as 
 see 42: 10. "And the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he 
 
prayed for his friends ; also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he 
 had before." 
 
 But to return to Abraham, when the fullness of time has come 
 and by the Divine legation of Moses, this family of Abraham is to 
 be organized fully as a visible Church and also as a Nation, to whom 
 has been assigned in the Abrahamic Covenant, the Land of Canaan 
 as an inheritance; another Covenant of redemption with its sacra- 
 mental seal as the former. The Passover ordinance is entered into 
 with a Church composed of masters with their slaves in the land of 
 Egypt as, see Ex. 12: 43, 41, 45. That such v/ere the constituent 
 elements of the Church at this time is mainfest from the terms of 
 the law. — "This is the ordinance of the passover; There shall no 
 stranger eat thereof, a foreigner and a hired servant shall not eat 
 thereof, but everj man's servant that is bought for monei;, when 
 thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof." This Holy 
 ordinance is given to the Church as a Church through its recog- 
 nized leaders, the elders. 
 
 Thus we find that the relation of master and slave was sanc- 
 tioned in the Church of God as such, and not merely as a civil 
 institution, even before the law given by Moses ; and this is certainly 
 very strong testimony to begin with against all theories of the sin- 
 fulness of slavery., When the Church of God, prepared with great 
 solemnity by a council of its elders, stood before Mount Sinai to 
 hear directly the very voice of her Lord and heard utter the great 
 Covenant of the law, two of the precepts of the law recognized the 
 propriety of the relation of master and slave within the Church 
 itself. In the fourth commandment masters are required to see to it 
 that their slaves shall keep holy the Sabbath as well as themselves 
 and children. In the tenth commandment, forbidding even unlaw- 
 ful desires of another's property, slaves are enumerated among the 
 representative articles of property v/hich men shall not covet, thus, 
 "Nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, 
 nor anything that is thy neighbor's," here recognizing slaves as 
 legitimately the property of the master, as much so as his money or 
 any of his possessions; and these ten commandments were written 
 by the finger of Almighty God upon tables of stone and given as a 
 foundation for the Mosaic Law. Who dare say to the Almighty, 
 "Why, or what, doest Thou?" If it seems that unnecessary care 
 has been taken to establish this conclusion we have only to reflect on 
 the important bearing it must have on the interpretation of the civil 
 code of Moses and its no less important bearing upon the interpre- 
 tation of the New Testament teaching concerning slavery. 
 
 9 
 
Moses found perpetual slavery already established among the 
 Hebrews, just as certainly as the Statesmen who framed the Con- 
 stitution of Virginia and South Carolina after the American Revolu- 
 tion found slavery already established among the people of those 
 States, and it is scarcely conceivable how language could more ex- 
 plicitly set forth the idea of permanent servitude as a part of the 
 social system in the Hebrew Commonwealth, and remember these 
 were God's chosen people. "Both thy bondmen and bondmaids 
 shall be of the heathen — of them shall ye buy bondmen and bond- 
 maids, and they shall be i^our possession, and ye shall take them 
 as an inheritance for your children after you to inherit them for 
 a possession." 
 
 Now, if you will compare the old slave codes of the former slave 
 States of this Union you will find that the fundamental principles 
 of the two are almost identical. But in some material points the 
 slave cede of the American Southern States were more restrictive 
 of the principles of slavery and the power of the master than the 
 Mosaic code, the Roman code of Justinian, which develops the law 
 of slavery as it existed at the time that Christ was on earth and of 
 the apostles, and after that time. 
 
 The Mosaic code protected the slave as a person just as the 
 codes of all the Southern States did. The wilful murder of a slave 
 under both the ancient and the modern codes was punished just as 
 any other murder (See Lev. 24: 17.) "He that killeth any man shall 
 surely be put to death," and (See Ex. 21 : 20) "If he (the slave) 
 die under his hand he (the master) shall be punished." 
 
 In order to protect the slave from cruel usage the Mosaic law 
 provided that in case of more than ordinary punishment, amounting 
 to cruelty, as the loss of an eye or a tooth from a blow of the mas- 
 ter, the slave should go free. In the American as in the Justinian 
 code it was provided in such case the slave should be taken from the 
 cruel master and sold to one more merciful, and cruelty to a slave 
 in America was an indictable offense. 
 
 But to return again to the Mosaic law, the holding of slaves 
 under the civil law was not deemed inconsistent with the highest 
 of obligations of religion, and the holiness symbolized in the ritual 
 law is manifest from the fact that when thirty-two thousand captive 
 slaves were taken with other spoils from Midian (See Num. 31 : 28) 
 Moses, by special command of Jehovah, took three hundred and 
 fifty-two of the "persons" and turned them over to Eliezer the 
 High Priest, as the Lords Tribute ; and then the further fact 
 that the Priests were assumed to be slave-holders, as appears from 
 Lev. 22: 10, 11, where it is said of the Priest's portion of the sacri- 
 
 10 
 
ficial victim, "No stranger shall eat of the holy thing, a sojourner 
 of the priest, or an hired servant shall not eat of the holy things 
 but if the priest buy any soul with his money he shall eat of it, 
 and he that is born in his house they shall eat of this meat." 
 
 We have now briefly, but we think very conclusively, traced the 
 existence of slavery under the Abrahamic Covenant, the Mosaic 
 laws, and by Divine prophesy even before Abraham and the 
 Mosaic constitution and laws, and then by God's command ("Get 
 ye your slaves from among the heathen"). And by a little search 
 into Roman and Grecian history we are easily convinced that at the 
 time of Jesus Christ's personal ministry upon the earth, slavery ex- 
 isted throughout the civilized world. Classical scholars compute 
 the number of slaves in the Roman Empire alone, at that time, at 
 sixty millions. The historian. Gibbon, after describing the condition 
 and character of slavery in the Empire, speaks thus of their number 
 (see "Gibbon Decline and Fall," Vol. 1, page 53), "After weighing 
 with attention every circumstance which could influence the balance 
 it seems probable that there existed in the time of the Emperor 
 Claudius about one hundred and twenty millions of persons. The 
 slaves were at least equal in number to the free inhabitants of Rome 
 and besides these the Grecians held about the same proportion of 
 slaves." We should bear in mind that quite a large majority of 
 these slaves were of the degraded barbarian, which was in accord 
 with the decrees of God; but a comparative few were Jews which 
 had been captives in war and held as slaves contrary to the law of 
 God. 
 
 We find then when Christ's ministry on earth began He found 
 slavery an institution fixed and established, as much so as that of 
 marriage — husband and wife. He did modify the latter by a restric- 
 tion to one wife at any one time, and a prohibition of divorce ; but 
 made no change in regard to the institution of slavery, simply en- 
 joining the duties of the slave to the master and of the master to the 
 slave as such. Now, all believers in the Messiahship of Christ 
 must admit that He did denounce sin and wickedness wherever and 
 whenever He found it during His sojourn upon the earth. A case 
 of slavery came before Him in one of the first of His recorded mir- 
 acles. (See Matt. 8 : 6, and Luke 7:2.) A Roman Centurion appeals 
 to Him to save the life of a highly valued slave. (Luke calls him 
 Doulos.) Jesus healed the slave and pronounced the master a hero 
 of faith beyond and yet met with in Israel. What an excellent op- 
 portunity this would have been for our Lord and Master to rebuke 
 the master and denounce slavery if it had been obnoxious to his 
 views and principles ; on the contrary slavery is left throughout the 
 
 11 
 
New Testament just as it was found in the Old Testament. Our 
 Lord manifestly uses the language of a slave-holding people and 
 alludes to the existence of such a relation as master and slave as a 
 fact familiar to His hearers. Particularly in His parables does He 
 borrow for the illustration of Divine Truth, as a thing perfectly 
 familiar to the people, the doings and sayings of masters and slaves. 
 For instance, the parable of the talents (Matt. 25: 14-30) in Vv^hich 
 some of the peculiar features of Roman slavery are distinctly 
 brought out. And others might be sighted, yet in no one of them 
 does He utter a word of condemnation or disapproval of slavery 
 as it then existed throughout the civilized world. And African 
 slavery as it existed for hundreds of years before 1860, in the South- 
 ern States of America, was in accord with the Roman system; and 
 whenever different it was in favor of the slave as to amelioration 
 and kindness and as to his elevation in the scale of civilization and 
 religion. But it vv^as said by the fanatical Abolition philanthropists, 
 for years before, and during and after that cruel, bloody, and utterly 
 unnecessary Civil War, that though Jesus Christ pronounced no 
 specific rebuke of the relation of master and siave yet He uttered 
 the great law of Love, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thy heart, etc., etc., and thy neighbor as thyself." It is curious 
 enough how people with a Bible at hand could quote this as an ori- 
 ginal saying of Jesus and intended as a "higher law" to supersede 
 the ancient ethical law of the Church as revealed in the Old Testa- 
 ment by Moses, or rather by Jehovah through Moses, and when it 
 had been thrice repeated by Moses (See Deut. 6: 5, 10, 12,-30: 6). 
 More than this, Jesus expressly tells them that the law and the 
 Prophets teach this great truth, and this great law of God was 
 promulgated first by Jehovah through Moses, his vicegerent, to 
 God's own chosen people, a slave-owning people. And anyone who 
 has ever owned slaves can know and realize that there is nothing 
 at all incompatible in a slave-owner's complying v/ith this law any 
 more than one who never owned a slave. If he is a loyal citizen 
 of a Kingdom he can love his King as a King, his slave as his slave, 
 and his neighbor as himself by the grace of God in his soul. 
 
 This Dead Issue having been briefly discussed, but we hope 
 clearly and distinctly set forth from the time that Noah left the Ark, 
 through the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and the Jewish periods of God's 
 people and the Church and the civilized world, we come now to 
 the time of the reorganization of the Jewish Church as a Church of 
 all nations through Christ's Apostles under the dispensation of the 
 Holy Spirit. Beyond question or doubt wherever the Apostles 
 went throughout the Roman Empire preaching the Gospel and 
 
 12 
 
planting Christian churches they found slavery existing by the 
 Roman laws, as has been already alluded to. And into this New 
 Testament Church, just as into the Abrahamic and Mosaic Church, 
 slave-holders and their slaves were admitted as its constituent ele- 
 ments ; and this continued the same throughout the Southern States 
 of this Union when I was a lad, and my father and my mother and 
 my grandmother and the older brothers and sisters of the family 
 were members of the same old Winchester, Ky., Church with the 
 old carriage driver, Riddle, who had his place in the gallery with 
 scores of other slaves, and after the sacramental elements had been 
 dispensed on the lower floor they were taken without fail to the 
 gallery to be received in the same manner by the faithful Christian 
 slaves. 
 
 In 1st Timothy, 6: 1, 2, we find these words: "Let as many 
 servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all 
 honor, that the name of God and His doctrine be not blasphemed 
 and they that have believing masters let them not despise them be- 
 cause they are brethren, but rather do them service, because they 
 are faithful and beloved partakers of the benefit. These things 
 teach and exhort." In 1st Cor. 7 : 20, 21 : "Let every man abide in 
 the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called being a 
 slave? Care not for it; but if thou mayest be made free use it 
 rather." Now, all this inspired testimony above quoted is from 
 Paul, the Apostle of Christ, more especially than the other eleven 
 as a minister to the Gentiles which included the heathen. Again, 
 take the entire epistle of Paul to Philemon, which is only one chap- 
 ter containing twenty-five verses, and nearly all of it about a run- 
 away slave named Onesimus whom Paul had captured and by the 
 power of the Holy Spirit made a Christian man. See how he ad- 
 dresses this slave-owner: "Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, unto 
 Philemon, our dearly beloved and fellow laborer." And the entire 
 epistle goes to show that the master as well as the slave was num- 
 bered among Paul's converts and furthermore it is plain that Paul 
 would have liked right well to have retained Onesimus as a body- 
 servant, but knew he had no right to him and therefore sent him 
 home to his master as a bearer of this epistle; and in the 10th and 
 11th verses he says, "I beseech thee, for my son Onesimus whom I 
 have begotten (converted) in my bonds, which in time past was 
 to thee unprofitable (when he ran away), but now profitable to thee 
 and to me." And this entire epistle fails to show the least antipathy 
 on the part of this inspired Apostle to the institution of slavery ; on 
 the contrary, in his pastoral epistles instructing young ministers in 
 their duties, he enjoins upon them specifically to teach slaves to 
 
 13 
 
be faithful and obedient to their masters. Thus in the instruction 
 to Titus (See 2: 8-10) : "Exhort slaves to be obedient to their own 
 masters and to please them well in all things, that they may adorn 
 .the doctrine of God our Savior." See how very similar this is to 
 the admonition given by inspiration to husbands and wives : "Hus- 
 bands, love your wives, etc." ; and "wives, be obedient to your own 
 husbands, etc." (as see 1st Peter 3: 1-7); and in other parts of the 
 Bible, both Old and New Testament, we find the relation of hus- 
 band and wife referred to and the institution of marriage in a very 
 strikingly similar manner to that of the institution of slavery. 
 
 Paul, in the Epistle addressed to the "Saints which are at 
 Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus," after specific directions 
 to husbands and wives, parents and children, precisely in the same 
 manner addresses specific directions to masters and slaves without 
 one word to distinguish this last named relation as ethically less 
 proper than either of the others. 
 
 So we see that we must seek elsewhere than in the Word of 
 God, as contained in the Old and New Testament, for a just cause 
 for the abolition of this institution of slavery. You may search the 
 Scriptures from the first chapter of Genesis to the last line of Reve- 
 lation, and by no fair and candid interpretation can you find any more 
 condemnation of this institution of slavery than you can find of 
 the institution of marriage and the family relation, or, any other 
 of God's ordained or authorized institutions. 
 
 The Queen of Sheba owned at least one slave in her day which 
 I doubt if Solomon in all his glory had money enough to buy — the 
 man riding in the chariot whom Philip was sent by Divine guidance 
 to talk to on the subject of religion, and who was converted and 
 baptized and sent on his way rejoicing. She had more need of that 
 man than she had for gold or silver. There is no doubt but he was 
 reliable, faithful, discrete, and in every respect trustworthy, and 
 possessed extraordinary capacity. Then how could she spare him? 
 But besides all this she loved him as her choicest slave and he 
 loved her as his own dear mistress. Now this is something that 
 the person who has never owned a slave knows nothing and has 
 no just conception of, and never can have. 
 
 An occurrence took place when I was quite a young man and 
 soon after I was married. My father had died and left me executor 
 of his estate, which comprised with other property some thirty or 
 forty slaves of all ages and both sexes. But after my older brothers 
 and sister had received the older and more experienced and com- 
 petent servants for their portions — leaving not one who was com- 
 petent to cut and fit clothing for the servants and such like things, 
 
 14 
 
so that my wife was compelled to cut and fit clothing until she 
 raised quite severe bumps and painful knots on her wrist and thumb 
 from severe labor with the shears. By inquiring around the neigh- 
 borhood I found and hired a young woman named Rachael, who be- 
 longed to a young lady who was quite an intimate friend of my 
 wife. Rachel proved to be an excellent cutter and fitter, and trust- 
 worthy and valuable servant for any branch of housekeeping. My 
 wife's father had given her two girls, one about seventeen and the 
 other fourteen years old, and her uncle had made her a bridal pres- 
 ent of a girl about fourteen years of age, and my father's estate 
 contained a full supply of "green," gawky servants, but not one 
 competent to fill the place of Rachael. Not long after I had hired 
 this woman, my wife and I went over to visit her parents, when, of 
 course, she displayed the bumps on her wrist and thumb and told 
 of what a relief I had given her by hiring Rachael and what a treas- 
 ure she was. When we started to return home her father went to 
 his secretary drawer and brought out a roll of bills amounting to 
 $1500 and said to me, "Take this and buy Amelia the best girl you 
 can find to fill the place of the one you have hired. If this is not 
 sufficient add a few hundred to it, but I think this should get a good 
 one." My first thought was to try to buy Rachael, although I had 
 very little hope of success. I lost very little time in seeing Miss 
 Mag (her mistress). She was not quite of sufficient age to give 
 a legal title to the girl, but I knew no title could be had without her 
 consent; so as affably and tenderly as I could I broached my subject 
 and finally let her know that I was really anxious to buy Rachael, 
 when she very promptly replied, "Rachael is not for sale." "Oh," 
 I said, "I knew you did not care to sell her, but I thought possibly 
 if I promised to take good care of her as you can, you might consent 
 to part with her, and I will give you $1500 for her." Then the tears of 
 indignation began to show in her eyes, she turned and looked me full 
 in the face, and replied : "You have not money enough to buy her. 
 I would not sell her for money." Then I found that I had carried 
 that matter as far as it would bear, so I said, "Well if I owned her 
 I suppose I would talk just like you do," and quickly turned the 
 conversation to something more pleasant. 
 
 It is plainly seen from God's Word that it is His will that His 
 people, those who know and worship Him, should enslave and own 
 those who know not God and are living in heathenish degradation 
 and barbarism as the African negroes were when they were brought 
 to America and sold as slaves. They were running naked or with 
 only breech-clouts on and living on the spontaneous production of 
 the earth and, for an occasional extra meal, eating each other. But 
 
 15 
 
snakes and lizards and wild fruits were their principal diet and they 
 were utterly ignorant of God, their Creator, and living only a few 
 degrees above the brute. It appears that any person who is not 
 unreasonably prejudiced against slavery would realize at once that 
 it was a great blessing to the negro to be brought from the jungles 
 of Africa, and their degradation and devil-worship, to civilization 
 and Christian influence in accordance with God's plan, to teach 
 them the practical truth of Scripture which says, "By the sweat of 
 thy face shalt thou eat thy bread." 
 
 It is plain to be seen that the command of God to "Get ye your 
 slaves from among the heathen" referred to that class of human 
 beings who were in such a low state of degradation that they re- 
 quired a process of elevation to capacitate them to comprehend the 
 truth of God as their Creator and the Creator of all things, and on 
 up to the Messiahship of Christ, There are many nations and 
 people such as the Chinese, Coreans, and many tribes in India 
 (and less than 100 years ago the Japanese), who are classed as 
 heathen, but all of these had more or less some just conception of 
 the immortality of the soul and a future life, and there is very little 
 doubt that all of these as well as the American Indian descended 
 from Japheth, and some of them a combination of Shem and Japheth. 
 There is no doubt but the African negro descended from Ham. And 
 there is very little doubt that the Esquimo descended from a combi- 
 nation of Ham and Japheth and are originally from the lowest grade 
 of humanity. And from these, by God's command, the slaves were 
 to be taken. 
 
 This was a plan of infinite wisdom to put these human beings 
 through a practical process of uplifting and elevation which would 
 result in their capacity to comprehend the truths of God's word 
 and their final civilization in the most practical, if not the only 
 practical way for any considerable success, and the former African 
 slaves of America are a convincing proof of this statement. 
 
 Whenever man undertakes to make improvement on God's 
 plan about anpthing, if he would only take a second sober thought 
 he should know that he is certain to make a botch of it, if he does 
 not do more and make a disaster. He will make a great blunder if 
 he does not commit a crime. One of Satan's successful strategies, 
 ever since he prevailed on our first mother. Eve, to disregard God's 
 law and undertake to improve upon His plans, has been to allure 
 mankind to try to fix up something better than God's way ; and of 
 course it has always been and always will be not only a failure but 
 a crime, and nearly certainly a disaster. Our Lord and Master 
 illustrated this Satanic strategy as He only could do, by his parable 
 
 16 
 
of the tares, as (See Matt. 13 : 25) : "But while men slept an enemy 
 came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way." In 
 30th verse : "Let them grow together until the harvest." The devil 
 never sowed tares in any political field which did more damage and 
 inflicted a greater curse upon the human race than he did in regard 
 to slavery. He planted a heavy crop in Scotland and England and 
 Wales and in the Northern and Western States of this Union, while 
 the Southern States who owned the slaves slept and basked in their 
 imagined security, knowing that they had purchased their stock of 
 slaves from English and Dutch and New England slave vessels. 
 King George I, and Queen Ann, and perhaps other crov/ned heads, 
 sanctioned and fostered this traffic in slaves and made profit in this 
 commercial deal and the older Northern States had done the same 
 thing. The laws of all the slave-holding States and the fundamental 
 laws of the Union (the Constitution of the United States) all 
 recognized and protected this property-right in slaves as thoroughly 
 as it did land titles, or money, or any kind of personalty. 
 
 The slaves as a mass, and with rare exceptions, were loyal to 
 their owners. Large numbers of them had descended for many 
 generations with the same family. The great, great grandfather, 
 or even further back than that, of the present owner, had purchased 
 the slaves, ancestors of some Dutch or English or other slave-trad- 
 ing vessel, with perhaps no clothing on except a breech-clout, and 
 their language of the most crude and unsatisfactory kind, while 
 their mental and moral condition was only a few degrees above the 
 brute creation. They had been brought from the jungles of Africa 
 where they had subsisted on fish and lizards and the spontaneous 
 production of that land. They had certainly been obtained from the 
 heathen according to God's command, and it was just as certainly 
 a blessing to the negro to be brought from their native jungles to 
 civilization and religious influence according to God's plan. They 
 were susceptible of being taught and advanced in their mental and 
 moral condition as well as having their capacity for manual labor 
 greatly increased, which v/as greatly needed by the purchaser. 
 
 If Satan had not sowed the tares that brought on that horridly 
 wicked and shockingly cruel Civil War, by this good day there 
 would not have been a wild heathen negro in Africa, and there 
 should have been by this time not a just as densely heathenish 
 Esquimo left between here and the North Pole. If the Northern 
 States had been looking after their own highest and best interest 
 and acting in accordance with God's way, they would have dis- 
 carded the African as they did because he had been created for a 
 coi ntry of warm climate, and could not be made profitable in theirs ; 
 
 ■ 17 
 
and would have gone toward the North Pole and captured just as 
 heathenish slaves from among the Esquimos, had them to shed their 
 walrus skins and their dog skins and their white bear skins, and 
 then use plenty of soap which they had never before seen or heard 
 of or felt any need for; and then after cleaning them to a human 
 consistency had them to don the cotton shirt and the woolen top- 
 clothing; and then would have taught them the practical force of 
 that passage of Scripture which says, "By the sweat of thy face 
 shalt thou eat thy bread" — instead of eating no bread at all; and 
 taught them to wash their faces every morning and their entire 
 bodies at least once in a month, winter or summer, instead of never 
 washing at all; yes, and taught them that when they had labored 
 steadily for six days they could rest on the seventh day, and this 
 because the Great Almighty, Creator of all things who had created 
 them, said so, and just this alone, if they heard nothing more, would 
 have excited their natural curiosity to learn more of the Great and 
 Almighty God ; and then when they saw the master and mistress 
 dress finer on that day than on either of the other six days and go 
 away to be absent for several hours every Sunday, their natural 
 curiosity would have impelled them to go and see and hear what was 
 said and done. All of this is practical mission work according to 
 God's plan. 
 
 Instead of many thousands of these degraded Esquimos having 
 died in their heathenish degradation and filth without any know- 
 ledge whatever of the God that created them, there could by this 
 good day have not been an Esquimo between here and the North Pole 
 who had not heard and did not know of the living and true God; 
 and all this would have been in accord with God's plan — a glorious 
 mission work; and still more, very much niore, there never would 
 have been that furious, dreadful, inexcusable Civil War which the 
 tares brought on as a part of their harvest, which shed the life- 
 blood of thousands of the best men who ever lived in this Republic, 
 and expended the utmost energies of more than 2,500,000 soldiers 
 made up of the philanthropic but fanatical and misguided people 
 of this government, deceived as they were by the devil's tares, 
 an army added to and more than doubled by the hirelings from 
 Europe who were procured at a high price. 
 
 And more, much more than all of this, there never would have 
 been that cruel, unjust and bloody Boar War which shed the life- 
 blood of thousands of as brave and patriotic men as ever shot a gun 
 in defense of their rights and justice, who were finally overwhelmed 
 by greed added to and inflamed by the prejudice against African 
 slaves which the Boars possessed — another harvest of tares. In- 
 
 18 
 
stead of this successful war of subjugation there would have been 
 no war, but by this good day there would have been ten or twelve, 
 or more. States of a great Republic of slave-holding States, made 
 up for the most part of the enterprising young men of Holland, 
 England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, who would have owned 
 plantations stocked with African slaves in this great African Repub- 
 lic; and the millions of acres of the jungles and waste land of that 
 country would have by this time been converted into cotton and 
 rice and cane and corn fields vying for beauty and profit with 
 our own beloved South-land, and competing in friendly rivalry with 
 us in the commerce of the world. All of South America and all 
 of the islands of our seas would have been slave-holding countries, 
 and by this time there would not have been an African or Esquimo 
 or Cannibal heathen of their type on earth, but there would have 
 been many millions of contented, happy, and very useful slaves and 
 laborers of African, Esquimo, and other inferior races which God 
 in His wisdom and sovereignty intended should be "servants of ser- 
 vants," and so proclaimed immediately after Noah left the Ark and 
 repeated many times after that in His inspired Word. 
 
 There would have been in the Northern and Western States 
 of this Union by our day at least ten millions Esquimo slaves, and 
 they would have been a very considerable portion of the capital 
 of these States, and there would have been no conflict between the 
 labor and capital because the labor would have been a part of the 
 capital; and these millions of slaves would not now have been de- 
 graded, ignorant, heathen, but civilized human beings who would 
 have now been prolific and prosperous instead of being as they now 
 are, almost exterminated by Satan's plan of civilization. Instead 
 of this present ignorance and degradation, they would have heard 
 and known much of the Almighty God their Creator, and they would 
 have been civilized according to His plan, and there would have 
 been at least ten million less of the anarchical skum of Europe and 
 Asia crowding our cities and polluting our land; and there never 
 would have been that bloody, destructive, and wicked Civil War 
 which left us, as its reward, its hellish hate and untold millions of 
 national debt after gloating for four long years and reveling in the 
 life-blood of many thousands of the very best men that this country 
 or the world ever produced — and all of this was only a part of the 
 harvest of the political tares which were sown while men slept and 
 much more can be told later in the Live Issue. 
 
 Some ten years since, I was driving to this city from about 
 three miles in the country in my buggy when I found a negro man 
 walking who had come some three miles on the road before I met 
 
 19 
 
with him. He had been working with a threshing machine, and it 
 had rained v^here they were threshing during the night (Friday 
 night), so that they could not thresh the next day; and he was mak- 
 ing for his home in the city. His shoes were very damp when he 
 came to the road where it had not rained ; and they were very thick- 
 ly covered with the dust, showing that he had walked several miles. 
 When I got opposite to him I checked up my horse and said, "Don't 
 you think a good ride would beat a bad walk?" With a polite bow, 
 and lifting his hat, he replied, "It would beat it mighty bad. Master 
 Ben." From his reply and his actions I knew that he had been a 
 slave and was acquainted with me, although I had not known that I 
 had ever seen him before. So I said, "Come, then, and get in here 
 with me," and he at once sprang to the side of the fence and com- 
 menced to kick the long grass to clean the dust from his feet, and was 
 soon seated in the buggy, and said, "I am sure you don't know me, 
 but I have known you for years, and used to know a good many 
 of the slaves you owned;" and then went on to name several of 
 them. I determined at once to have him do nearly all of the talk- 
 ing while we rode together, and I only tried to keep his mind and 
 conversation on the subject that I wished to hear him discuss. 
 His first start was to compliment me as a master, and tell what my 
 slaves had said about that ; and he had a good deal to say about old 
 slave times, and talked all the while more favorably of slavery than 
 I expected him or any other negro to do; and finally said, "I thank 
 my God from the bottom of my heart that my grand-mammy, away 
 back, was brought from Africa to this country for a slave." Then 
 I said, "You don't find many of your people who agree with you 
 about this." And he replied, "There are a great many more than 
 you might think for. I hear some of these young fellows that never 
 were slaves saying mean things about the old slave-owners, and I tell 
 them they are fools and don't know what they are talking about, 
 and I ask them Where would you have been if your grand-mammy 
 had never been a slave? and I tell them that if you or I either had 
 been born in Africa we would not had much more sense than a wild 
 monkey. And nearly every time you hear one of these young 
 negroes talking that way about the old slave-owners, he has not got 
 a dollar, or nothing but the clothes on his back, and never will 
 have." Then he went on to say, "I bought a little house here in 
 town and paid half down, and I am trying to pay for it, and it keeps 
 me awake at night trying to get a way to pay my taxes and get 
 something to eat for my family. I don't believe this thing you 
 call freedom is half as big a thing as some people try to make it 
 out." The ride with this man set me to thinking and investigating 
 
 20 
 
the labor question more thoroughly, and had something to do with 
 my writing this book. 
 
 Lincoln never made a truer statement than when he said it 
 was an interminable conflict and therefore impossible for this 
 union of States to continue to exist part free and part slave. The 
 two civilizations were entirely dissimilar and inconsistent, and "how 
 can two walk together unless they be agreed," or agree to disagree? 
 And how can they agree to disagree while one is going on the way 
 that God in His wisdom and providence had plainly marked out and 
 said, "Here is the way, walk ye in it," while the other had been be- 
 guiled by Satan to sing the siren song of brotherly love and play 
 upon the harp that alluring lullaby that all mankind are born free 
 and equal? Does any sane person believe that God, in His Word, 
 anywhere, commands that we shall love the filth, degradation, and 
 heathenish ignorance of the naked African in his jungles, and the 
 Esquimo in his skins of wild beasts and his burrow in the ice-clad 
 earth, or the condition of any other human beings that are in a 
 similar degradation? And then this lullaby of free and equal, free 
 from filth, degradation and ignorance? Equal to what and to 
 whom? The entire proposition is too supremely ridiculous to re- 
 quire any reply — the statement refutes itself. But Satan kept all 
 the while entirely out of mind the overwhelmingly potent truth in 
 God's Word that the "love of money is the root of all evil," and God, 
 in His v\7isdom and providence, had made this love of money to 
 counterbalance itself in His plan for the labor system which He 
 devised, so that the labor was a very valuable part of capital; and 
 therefore no conflict between the labor and capital could exist; but, 
 instead a constant, continual elevation of the lowest grade of heath- 
 enism and degradation of the human race to religious influence and 
 civilization according to His wise plan. 
 
 What an overwhelming difference it would have made in the 
 past, and what a difference it would make now if all of the states- 
 men and politicians and public men would place a supreme esti- 
 mate upon the "Thus saith the Lord" in regard to all matters of 
 vital importance? It would make as infallible a guide to them as 
 the compass is to the mariner. In the days of my youth I heard 
 lawyers at the bar, who were not church members at all or pro- 
 fessors of religion, quoting the Mosaic law and even passages of 
 the New Testament; and it appeared to me then, when it was cor- 
 rectly and aptly applied, to be an impregnable and incontestable 
 establishment of their case. I have not heard that kind of argument 
 in our courts for a long while. 
 
 31 
 
The pen that wrote the proclamation that freed the slaves of 
 America was the most destructive and damaging weapon that was 
 ever used against the African race. They were a contented, happy, 
 and prolific race, raised up by God's plan and providence from the 
 lowest degradation and heathenism to a civilized and comparatively 
 Christianized condition; and during these two hundred and more 
 years of transformation they had been for the most part brought 
 down along with the master's family, inherited by the son or daugh- 
 ter from the parent from the slave-ship and the voyage from Africa 
 to the day of Lincoln's proclamation. Each generation from the 
 ship to that fatal day had been steadily advanced and elevated until 
 they were the most trustworthy, reliable, and profitable servants 
 in the world, and now at this late day it is almost incredible to re- 
 late the numerous incidents of fidelity to the owner which was fre- 
 quently displayed by the slave. I know that I would have been 
 financially ruined by that war but for the faithfulness of my trusted 
 slaves. If all the deeds of fidelity performed by the faithful slaves 
 to their owners, during that bloody war, were even briefly related 
 it would require a volume much larger than this one to contain 
 them ; but I will relate a few as samples of thousands. 
 
 I lived during the war about three miles away from any turn- 
 pike road, but there was a dirt road which lay along the entire length 
 of my farm and extended along two or three other farms to the 
 turnpike which led to Winchester, Ky., about six miles distant from 
 my house; and I was "over-seer" of the dirt road and took care to 
 never permit it to be repaired during the entire war and of course 
 it soon became impassable for any wagon or vehicle, and by this 
 means we saved our grain and provender from the Federal Army. 
 But my father's estate owned (and I had control of it), a two hun- 
 dred acre farm which was bounded on one side by the turnpike, 
 about a mile from Winchester; and this farm became the camping 
 ground for the Federal Armies as they passed to and from Lexing- 
 ton through Winchester to Mt. Sterling, back and forth. These 
 soldiers had burned all the fencing on the road, and in sight of the 
 road, on the farm ; but there was enough material left on the back 
 part of the farm to make a temporary fence along the turnpike to 
 enable me to get some benefit of the grass that would grow on the 
 farm during the spring and summer. I was not willing to risk my 
 mule teams upon that road for fear that soldiers might pass and 
 press them into service ; so I had Herod, my ox-driver, to hitch two 
 yoke of oxen to the feed wagon with the hay frame on it and go with 
 three or four of my most reliable men to gather up material from the 
 back part of the farm and make a fence along the road. They had 
 
worked there until the afternoon, when a regiment or two of infan- 
 try came on a forced march from Mt. Sterling, bound for Camp 
 Nelson, and pressed the wagon, oxen and Herod into their service 
 and piled their knapsacks on the wagon; and then as many tired 
 soldiers as could find a place sat all around it on the edge of the 
 frame, leaving only room for Herod to sit on the front end to drive 
 the team; and thus they put him into their forced march. When 
 night came on, they went into camp between Lexington and Nich- 
 olasville — more than twenty-five miles for an afternoon's drive for 
 the ox-wagon and team. Herod told me that he noticed a pond of 
 water on the side of the road about a mile back from where they 
 went into camp, and he got permission from the Commander to take 
 his team back to that pond for water which put him outside of the 
 picket line, and instead of stopping to water his oxen he kept a 
 steady "lick" for home all night; and by daylight next morning had 
 come back about eight miles and stopped to hide his team from 
 passers along the road behind a large barn and ice-house, a short 
 distance from the road, where he fed his cattle and took a four or 
 five hour's nap on the wagon while the oxen rested ; and when he 
 awoke it was nearly noon. Then he hitched up and started for 
 home, inquiring of every man he met riding in a buggy if he had 
 passed any soldiers on the road ; and receiving a favorable reply 
 each time he kept on his way until he was about ten miles from 
 home, when a man in a buggy told him he had not passed any on 
 the road, but there were lots of them in Winchester when he passed 
 through ; so he determined to take no further risk and turned off to 
 the left, and came through the farms from there to our home. He 
 was thoroughly acquainted with the farms and took advantage of 
 gateways so that he only had to take down three or four stake-and- 
 ridered fences and put them back as he found them ; and about nine 
 o'clock that night I was sitting on my front porch, brooding, and 
 very sad, with the moon shining bright, with the stillness of the 
 night, but the world very gloomy to me, when I heard the familiar 
 words, "Ben, Buck, Bright, Ball," and a loud crack of the whip 
 about a half mile distant in the woods in front of my house. I 
 sprang to my feet, smacked my hands, and exclaimed, " Well done / 
 There is Herod and the ox-team." I knew he would come back if 
 they did not kill him or tie him ; but I had not the faintest glimmer- 
 ing hope of ever seeing the oxen and wagon again. I retired soon 
 after this in much better spirits than I had been for some time be- 
 fore. Next morning, early, when I went to the back door, Herod 
 was there waiting to make his report and I congratulated him upon 
 his splendid success. All of the servants on the place and in the 
 
 23 
 
neighborhood called him "King." My father purchased him from 
 the estate of Roger Brookin when he was about sixteen years old. 
 Herod and a man named Bob were the only two slaves I ever heard 
 of my father purchasing. My father was making his brother Abram 
 a visit, and while he was there my uncle was fretting and complain- 
 ing of the aggravation and bad behavior of "little" Bob, as he called 
 him because he had two of that name. My uncle had brought this 
 Bob from Virginia with him when he removed to Kentucky, and 
 my father soon learned of the old stock of my grandfather's slaves 
 Bob descended from and told my uncle if he would put a fair price 
 on him he would buy him, and they soon closed a trade. Bob had 
 more of his old Virginia friends at his new home than he left at his 
 old home and appeared to be more happy and better contented. 
 
 My father brought with him when he removed from Virginia 
 to Kentucky in 1818, Watt and Rachael (husband and wife), Jim 
 and Elijah (two brothers about sixteen and eighteen years of age). 
 These slaves were all born in his father's family and he received 
 them as an inheritance. They had been raised by his parents from 
 slaves which had been brought into the family from my grand- 
 mother Inskeeps' parents or descended along with the Van Meter 
 family and the families with whom they intermarried back to John 
 Van Meter who was the son of the immigrant from Holland to 
 New Amsterdam in 1663. 
 
 Rachael and V/att reared five sons and three daughters, ac- 
 cording to their ages as follows : Cynthy, Susan, Granvil, Anthony, 
 Andrew, Dillard, Eunice, and Harve. All of them were stout able- 
 bodied men and women. My father, in his life-time, had given to 
 my older and only living sister, the second daughter, Susan, and 
 she was considered the most efficient and valuable woman-servant 
 in the family. He had given Granvil to my older brother, Isaac; 
 and to my older brother, Jacob, he had given Anthony ; and he gave 
 Dillard to me. All of the others my father still owned at the time 
 of his death. My brother Jacob died a few years before my father 
 and left Anthony and a man named Mark which he had inherited 
 from our grandfather's estate, with three hundred acres of land, to 
 his widow. My brother, Thomas C, inherited from our father's 
 estate the youngest child, Harve, then about fourteen years of age, 
 which old Rachael called her baby and made a great pet of. 
 
 The first land deal I ever made was to purchase the life interest 
 or dower of my sister-in-law's three hundred acres of land; and I 
 induced her to include the two slaves in the deal, Mark and 
 Anthony. Then I owned two of Rachael's children. In the mean- 
 time Andrew had married Martha, the oldest girl my wife's father 
 
 2-i 
 
had given her, and although he still belonged to my father's estate 
 I paid hire on him and kept him at home, so that Watt and Rachael 
 felt sure that I would own three of their sons and they were deter- 
 mined that I should own the baby. Old Rachael gave me no peace 
 on this account. In the meantime my man, Mark, married my 
 brother Thomas' cook, named Mandy. Mark was worth $1200, and 
 $600 would have been a full price for Harve, then about fourteen 
 years old ; but my brother Thomas had learned that Old Rachael was 
 determined that I should own Harve ; so when I offered to buy him 
 he priced him at $1200, and said if I would rather he would give me 
 Harve for Mark. So he had Old Rachael in my rear, and he stood 
 very firm in front. He had inherited two hundred acres of land 
 from our grandfather's estate which adjoined the lands I inherited 
 in the same way and also joined the land I had bought of my sister- 
 in-law, and I knew he wished to sell this land (which joined me and 
 v/as tv/o miles or more from his residence), and buy lands that ad- 
 joined him. I told old Rachael if she v/ould be quiet and have pat- 
 ience I would own Harve if I had to give Mark for him; and this 
 would quiet her for the time, until my brother Tom would say or 
 do something to "set her on nettles" and make her come at me 
 again. In this way I v/as for several months vv^ith old Rachael as a 
 fire in my rear, until I finally got the land priced at what I thought 
 was a $600 reduction; and then I swapped my $1200 man for his 
 $600 boy and made the land deal, and made old Watt and Rachael 
 happy. When my father made his will he did not mention old 
 Watt and Rachael in it but told me that he wished me to take 
 first-rate care of them as long as they lived at the expense of his 
 estate ; and after his death I told what my father had said, and that 
 they could live wherever they preferred, and they concluded to live 
 where they were and occupy the house where they had lived before 
 his death; but after remaining there for several months they con- 
 cluded to go to Fayette County and live where the oldest son 
 (Granvil who was then dead), had lived with my older brother, 
 Isaac, where their son had left some family. After they had been 
 there about one year, when I was making my brother a visit, they 
 both came in delighted to see me and let me know that they had a 
 matter they wished to lay before me, which amounted to this : The 
 place where I lived was the old homestead of my grandfather, and 
 in the latter part of his life he had bought an imported short-horn 
 bull named "Goldfinder," for which he paid $1500, and built a fine 
 large stable of nicely hewn logs twenty feet square, a story and a 
 half high, and covered with first-class shaved shingles. Old Watt's 
 proposition to me was to let him have Goldfinder's stable and have 
 
 25 
 
it fixed up for him so that he could live in it and be far enough 
 away from everybody "not to be bothered." It was at least fifty 
 yards from any other building, in a blue-grass lot ; and a nice spring 
 of water was in the lot, about twenty or thirty yards distant. I 
 told him to get his master Isaac to send him up in his two-horse 
 wagon with all of his possessions and I would let him have Anthony 
 and Andrew and Dillard to help him, and he could get my wagon 
 and haul all of the rock and lumber to build a house to suit his 
 taste. Andrew was an ingenious mechanic, had built for me many 
 rods of excellent stone fence and some brick flues for cabins, and 
 my blacksmith shop, and was an ingenious fellow with tools of 
 any kind. It was interesting to see the building progress. I told 
 Andrew to fix the old man's house any way he wished to have it, 
 just so that he made it look respectable on the outside. The first 
 thing they did was to go to the creek and the quarry and get a sup- 
 ply of broad, thin, flat rock and set them against the bottom logs 
 of the building all around on three sides, leaving the door front free; 
 then the cellar was dug out at least four feet deep and sloping in 
 as it was made deeper, so that it was two feet smaller at the bottom 
 on each side than it was at the floor. The dirt which was taken 
 out was placed against the flat rock all around the three sides of 
 the house, sloping from the house so as to thoroughly exclude the 
 air and turn the water from the cellar ; and then the blue-grass sod 
 was taken from where I told him he could have a garden and sodded 
 on one side and the back end of his house, leaving one side of the 
 terrace next to the garden for old Rachael to plant her pinks and 
 daisies and hollyhocks; and on that side I had a small patch pailed 
 in for their garden ; and a more fertile spot did not lay out of doors, 
 because it was originally fine land and then the gleanings from the 
 stable had been thrown here for years and then the blue-grass sod 
 had covered that up for perhaps thirty years. There was a strong, 
 close floor placed over the cellar, and another overhead to make a 
 good room up to be reached by a step-ladder. Another step-ladder 
 led to the cellar, a trap door to enter each, while a very 
 broad porch or shed covered the door. One window cut op- 
 posite the door, a flue built of brick for his stove, the building 
 "chinked and daubed," and Watt's house was completed in accord- 
 ance with his wishes; and I never saw two people who seemed to 
 enjoy life more than those old darkies did as long as Watt lived. 
 He died the second year of the Civil War, and after his death I had 
 Rachael's oldest son, Anthony, to take care of her as long as she 
 lived, which was four or five years. She lived to see freedom, and I 
 have no doubt but it was the saddest sight she ever saw, although 
 
 26 
 
she did not lack for the comforts of life. Anthony raised one son 
 about the beginning of the war, and his wife got my permission to 
 let her name him for me. After the war they raised a daughter and 
 named her Rachael, and she is the only member of Anthony and 
 Neoma's family now living, a large, stout, healthy woman. She has 
 worked for my family as a cook and general house-servant and I 
 would not wish for a more competent one but for her besetting sin, 
 and it is the great and ruinous enemy of the race at this time — 
 " Intoxicating drink and dope," which renders her utterly worth- 
 less. I have taken her out of the clutches of the law and from pri- 
 son and tried to control her, but to no purpose now; and the poor 
 creature has shown her gratitude for my kindness by making what 
 to her, must have been, quite a sacrifice; for after I had taken 
 her from jail she purchased and brought to me a nice little china 
 pitcher and insisted that I should accept it as a present just to let 
 her show me her gratitude — without a master, without protection 
 — a withering waif. 
 
 The supreme devotion that old Watt manifested for my 
 wife was very interesting. He showed very plainly that he consid- 
 ered her the prettiest and the smartest and the best thing in the 
 world. He called her "Miss," and he never bothered me or bother- 
 ed about me concerning anything if he could get to see "Miss." 
 She called him Uncle Watt. Nearly all of the men, women, and 
 children on the place called him Daddy, or Old Daddy. He was my 
 wife's gardener as long as he lived. She would never have him to 
 do any work in the garden except to take two or three of the able- 
 bodied men and have it planted by her supervision the way she 
 wished to have it, and after that she had no further care of it. He 
 would have it kept in fine condition. He made it a rule to have the 
 cabbage ploughed once a week, and the entire vegetable garden 
 cleaned of weeds once every week by calling out all of the field hands 
 (6 to 10) at daylight one morning in every week to have the garden 
 cleaned before breakfast. Watt was Commander-in-Chief of that 
 force in that garden, and his orders must be obeyed implicity. On 
 one occasion when Watt had the hands in the garden I walked out in 
 sight of him and he called to me in a loud, coarse voice so that I 
 knew he was angry, and when I answered he said, "Come here, 
 please sir." I went, and he said to me, "I wish you would take that 
 nigger there out'n this garden and never let him come in here no 
 mo'. I tell him to do somethin' and he go right off to do somethin' 
 else just like I had said nothin' and I don't want to be bothered with 
 him no mo'." I replied to Watt by calling to Thruston at the 
 far side of the garden in a very firm tone of voice. He came quick, 
 
 27 
 
and when he came I said to him, "If I had a whip I would give you 
 a few right now, and if you don't go and do just what the old man 
 told you to do I will have your shirt off in tv^^o minutes." And he 
 did not need to be told the second time. Every man in the garden 
 heard what was said and I never had any further bother about the 
 garden. Thrustcn was the oldest son of old Riddle my grand- 
 father's body-servant during the war of 1812-13, and I inherited 
 him and his youngest brother from my grandfather's estate, and 
 this was the nearest that I ever came to whipping either of them. 
 They were both drafted with some of my other men to build for- 
 tifications at Camp Nelson; and Riddle, Jr. died of the fever while 
 there, and was the first slave I lost by the war. Thruston came 
 back after he had been there a few months but showed discontent 
 after his return and ran away a short time before Lincoln's emanr 
 cipation proclamation and I have never seen him since. He was the 
 only slave I ever owned who left me before the proclamation of 
 freedom. I ov/ned thirty-three — of all ages, sex, and sizes, when 
 the war for their emancipation began. 
 
 The v/ay I came to own my first slave was this : It must have 
 been in the month of August, for I was not going to school and had 
 been riding around with my father for days helping him to sepa- 
 rate the live-stock on the farm wherever he wished to make any 
 change and frequently going to the field where the hands on the 
 farm were ploughing and hoeing corn. The noon meal (dinner) 
 was at about twelve o'clock the year around, but the morning and 
 evening meals vary from an hour or more to regulate the labor by 
 the sun. The three meals were for the most part at 6, 12 and 6, 
 but varied to 5, 12 and 7 in summer, and in the winter proportion- 
 ately. I was in the seventeenth year of my age. After dinner 
 my father and I walked dovv^n to the front stile. He had let his 
 horse go with the saddle and bridle on to graze on the luxuriant 
 blue-grass in the front lot for an hour or more while he had dinner. 
 I said to him, "If you or I go after Bob (his horse) we will have 
 trouble to get him, but if we send any of the boys they will have no 
 trouble because he will think they are going to feed him," and see- 
 ing a lad of about fourteen years down in the lower part of the yard, 
 named Dillard, I called to him to "go and bring Bob here to father 
 right quick." He scampered away down under the hill and when 
 the horse saw him coming he only held his head up and without 
 moving allowed the boy to put the reins over his head and climb up 
 into the saddle by the stirrup. But instead of taking Bob to the 
 stable for feed as the horse expected, he "mosied" him to the front 
 stile and rolled off on the far side while my father mounted the 
 
horse leisurely from the stile, and then instead of riding away im- 
 mediately he pointed with his riding whip to Dillard and said to 
 me, "I am going to give you that fellow," and before I could make 
 any reply, Dillard looking up into my father's face with a broad 
 smile which showed two rows of fine broad teeth, said, "Dat suits 
 me, Mastah." My father soon rode away leaving me with my 
 darkey , who showed many signs of pleasure and delight. I very 
 soon said to Dillard, "Let's go to the stable and see my filly, don't 
 you think you can take good care of her for me?" "Yes, sir, I can 
 keep her fat and sleek." We went to the stable and I showed him 
 just how much oats and how many ears of corn I wished her to have 
 at each feed, three times a day, and from that time on until several 
 years after Lincoln issued his emancipation proclamation I rode a 
 well-kept saddle horse, not all this time by Dillard, but constantly 
 and carefully by him until after I was married. Then after a while 
 I superseded him as my horse-groom by his youngest brother 
 Harve, of whom I will have more to say later. 
 
 In those Ante-bellum days we had altogether v/ood fires and 
 when I went to keeping house Dillard kept plenty of wood on the 
 long back porch and made me a fire in my bed-room and in the 
 dining-room every morning before I got up ; in fact, Dillard was my 
 body-servant and main-stay for several years after I v/as married. He 
 was the fourth son and eighth child of Watt and Rachael whom my 
 father brought with him when he removed to Kentucky in 1818 
 and married my mother, the only child of Capt. Isaac Cunningham, 
 Besides Watt and Rachael my father brought Phil and Nancy and 
 two brothers of about twelve and sixteen years, named Jim and 
 Lige, of whom I may have more to say later on. But Watt and 
 Rachael were the two oldest slaves my father brought with him 
 and were about his age. He inherited them from his father in 
 whose family they had been born and raised, and no doubt from 
 parents whom his parents had inherited from their parents, very 
 probably back to the time when John Van Meter's four sons re- 
 moved from New York state and built their forts in Virginia in 
 1744 as (See Kirchival's History of the Valley). John Van Meter, 
 this book describes as a man of roving disposition, a man who made 
 his money principally by trading, and traded a good deal with the 
 Indians outside of civilization and conducted something of a cara- 
 van manned principally by a band of friendly Caw Indians whom 
 he employed for the purpose. 
 
 This John Van Meter had no doubt bought from some Dutch 
 or English slave vessel a supply of slaves to give to his four sons 
 when he urged them to go and possess some of the rich valleys of 
 
 29 
 
Virginia, which they did in 1744 after procuring a land grant from 
 King George I, through Gov. Gooch, then Governor of the Colony 
 of Virginia. We know that each one of them brought slaves from 
 New York when they came to Virginia, and it is not at all im- 
 probable that Watt and Rachael and in fact all of these slaves' 
 ancestors had been purchased by John Van Meter from a slave- 
 vessel ; but we have no record as to when their ancestors came into 
 the family, but we do know that these were all born in my grand- 
 father's family and my father inherited them. 
 
 Isaac Van Meter, the son of John, the enterprising Indian 
 trader who moved from New York in 1744 and built his fort at 
 what has since been known as the Indian Old Fields on the South 
 branch of the Potomac in Hardy County, now W. Virginia, was 
 killed and scalped by the Indians in 1757 because he disregarded 
 the admonition and entreaties of the faithful slave woman. It was 
 like this: It was her daily duty to ride out and bring the cows 
 up and milk them, and as usual she went after the cows in the even- 
 ing, but before she had gone far the horse began to prick up his 
 ears and prance and snort until the woman became frightened by 
 the horses' extraordinary behavior and slackened the reins when 
 the horse scampered off in a gallop to the fort and when she came 
 back in such haste without the cows her master asked what was 
 the matter and showing great excitement and fright she said, 
 "Mastah, dars Injuns out dar jes' sho!" "Did you see any Indians?" 
 "No sir, I didn't see none, but old Dave smelt 'um and kep' cuttin' 
 up till I loosened the lines and den he come taren' home. I tell 
 you, Mastah, dars Injuns out dar jes sho. Old Dave jes' snorted 
 and carry on jes' lak he does when he smell injuns and I know dars 
 injuns out dar jes' de way old Dave come tarin' back." "You got 
 scared half to death at your shadow, you go on and attend to your 
 work, I'll bring the cows." "Massa, if you gwine out dar aint 
 you gwine to take you gun?" "No, I don't need a gun. If there 
 were any Indians out there they would be friendly Indians. There 
 has not been a hostile Indian here in our country for four or five 
 years. You go on to your work, I'll bring the cows." The woman 
 obeys orders, but as she goes talks thus to herself: "Mastah 
 talkin' 'bout good injun; aint no good injun 'cept dead injun." 
 (the slaves dreaded and hated Indians.) She went directly to her 
 mistress and was relating all of the above occurrence to her when a 
 loud report from a rifle was distinctly heard perhaps a quarter of a 
 mile away. When the curiosity at least of the entire 'family was 
 awakened and all went out to see and hear, they had not long to 
 wait before the horse came galloping back without a rider, and then 
 
 30 
 
in great excitement the gates of the fort were quickly closed, the 
 guns put in order, and the horn blown with that furious and con- 
 tinued blast which brought everyone for miles around within its 
 hearing with all possible speed to the fort, and as quickly as they 
 could, with proper precaution, arrange to go, they went in search 
 for Isaac Van Meter and found his bleeding, dead body, scalped 
 and not far from where the faithful woman had turned back in 
 fright for the fort. It was night when the dead body was brought 
 to the fort and it rained during the night which so obscured the 
 trail of the savages that there never was much definite information 
 obtained in regard to them; but the opinion prevailed that it was 
 some malicious brute from the tribe of Indians who had removed 
 from that valley across the Ohio River and who had gathered up a 
 small squad of his own kind and sneaked back to his old home to 
 seek vengeance. 
 
 Harve, the youngest child of Watt and Rachael, for whom I 
 had swapped my $1200 man, Mark, for a $600 boy, was the most 
 loyal, faithful, and devoted slave, that I ever owned. My wife 
 contended that I made a pet of him and showed him great favors 
 because I never required him to work in the field with the other 
 hands or with tools, but I knew that he was worth more than twice 
 as much to me where I did work him as he could have been as a 
 farm hand or as a mechanic. I always kept a good horse, saddle 
 and bridle for his own use and it required a good horse to do his 
 service because he did a great deal of hard riding which I would 
 have been compelled to do but for him; seeing after several hun- 
 dred beef cattle and other live stock on the farm. He knew the 
 number of cattle that should be in each pasture, and where every 
 horse and sheep and pig belonged, and it was his duty to keep them 
 in place, and it was his regular business to count the cattle in each 
 pasture twice a week and see them every day to see if there was one 
 with a cracked heel, or had slipped a horn, or any other trouble, 
 and report to me, or if I was not at home, to get help from the field 
 and put tar and a rag on the slipped horn, or verdigris on the cracked 
 heel, or have done whatever he knew I would do if I were there. 
 He kept my shoes well shined, my saddle and driving horses well 
 groomed and cared for, and the mistress's carriage and horses in 
 nice condition. He was passionately fond of a fine horse and kept 
 the horses he used in as nice condition as those I used. He was as 
 fine a reins-man as I ever saw on a coach seat, and drove my family 
 carriage for about fifteen years, and kept the carriage, harness 
 and horses in first-class condition. He had one of the horses that 
 he drove to the carriage for four or five years trained for cutting 
 
 31 
 
antics equal to a circus horse, and when the congregation began 
 to disperse from the church he would have selected his place near 
 the church door convenient for my wife and family to get in, and 
 in a conspicuous place, and then by a certain twitch of the lines 
 which the horse understood he would have him begin his antics, 
 and by the time the larger number of people were coming cut he 
 would have the horse standing on his hind feet and holding one 
 front foot out as if to shake hands with the congregation, and all 
 the while the other horse would be standing stock still; but some 
 of the nervous ladies would think it passing strange that my wife 
 and family would get right into the carriage without the least con- 
 cern about that frantic horse. Harve was nearly as reliable, faith- 
 ful, and true to the Southern cause as he was to me. I had an Irish- 
 man in my employ living on my farm about one mile from my home, 
 who v/as a very zealous Southern man, and he very soon found that 
 Harve v/as thoroughly trustworthy for anything he could do for 
 the Southern cause, and he had Harve to do many things that would 
 have got his neck "cracked" if it had been known by the Federal 
 authorities, and perhaps I would know nothing of it for weeks after 
 it occurred and v/hen he had a first-rate opportunity he would tell me 
 of it. "When I would caution him and warn him that if the Federal 
 soldiers ever caught up with him they v/ould hang or shoot him, 
 he would give one of his big "nigger laughs" and say, "Mastah, you 
 can't do anything like that, but they never suspect me; they think 
 I am a nigger." I had been riding a fine black saddle horse around 
 town when there were no troops there, and soon after some came 
 in and a Federal officer came with a posse to get him and came 
 very near succeeding; but Harve and McGuire managed to save the 
 horse that night. McGuire led the horse and eluded the pickets 
 by going through the country in a back way to the cemetery and 
 locked my horse up in a vault. An Irish friend of McQuire's was 
 keeper of the cemetery and he had no difficulty in making this 
 arrangement. There were a lot of Federal soldiers camped very 
 near the cemetery, but McGuire said he knew that was the very 
 last place a Yankee soldier ever wanted to go, and he knew the 
 horse would be safe. I did not know where they had hid the horse 
 until the soldiers left and they brought my horse home and told me 
 all about this. 
 
 Harve knew Mr. William Curry for years before the war, and 
 he was with Morgan's command and was captured on the Ohio raid 
 when Gen. Morgan surrendered and was taken to Camp Chase, but 
 after a while was removed with others to a prison further North and 
 when in the vicinity of Wheeling, V/. Va., he jumped through a 
 
 32 
 
water-closet window and made his escape, then assumed the garb 
 of a cattle-shipper which business he had followed before the war 
 and returned on a passenger train to Covington, Ky., and made 
 his way to his home within a few miles of my house, and his 
 wife came the next evening to see me and let me know that Mr. 
 Curry wished m.e to furnish him a first-rate horse that could out- 
 run a Yankee and he would try to have it returned to me as 
 soon as he could get along without it. I related these facts to 
 Harve early the next morning and after he reflected for a few 
 minutes, he said, "I had better get up the Phaeton filly and have 
 her shod for him, (she was a mare by Impt'd Phaeton, dam by 
 Colossus, he by Impt'd Glenco, and Harve had been riding her) 
 she can go from here to old Richmond quicker than any Yankee's 
 horse." I said, "Well, get her up and have her shod all around. 
 And I told Mrs. Curry to tell Will to take the horse he finds in the 
 stall right in front of the door, so you be sure to put her in that stall 
 and leave the stable doer unlocked and then if she is not there in 
 the morning we will not make much fuss about it." The next 
 morning as soon as he saw me he said, "The filly is gone," and then 
 chuckled as he added, "They will never catch him." The Phaeton 
 mare was found in my front pasture about ten days or two weeks 
 after that. 
 
 If all of the occurrences in behalf of the Southern cause which 
 Harve participated in were related here he would take up more than 
 his share of this book. I have more than once met with soldiers 
 during and after the war with whom I was not acquainted, and when 
 they learned my name would enquire about Harve and relate 
 something he had dene to help them out of a tight place when 
 Gen. Morgan or Gen. Smith or Col. Cluke made their raids into 
 Kentucky. He remained with me for several years after the war 
 closed, but finally removed to Lexington and drove a carriage and 
 waited on some v/ealthy gentleman and finally virtually destro^/ed 
 himself with strong drink. He married a Lexington woman, but 
 left no children and died before he was fifty years old. He was a 
 very valuable slave but entirely unfit to be free, and did not wish 
 to be. Sad, very sad to remember. His older brother, Andrew, 
 who was my foreman in the farm labor both before and after the 
 war, and was working for me when he met with an accident from a 
 drill while he was preparing to make a blast, which finally ended 
 his life after lingering several months. His widow, Martha, is still 
 living and has tv/o children living. Dillard lived ten or twelve 
 years after the war. He and his wife are both dead and left two 
 daughters, and one of them is still living. Anthony, Andrew, Dil- 
 
 33 
 
lard and Harve were all stout, able-bodied men — sons of Watt and 
 Rachael, and I believe the entire family will be extinct with the 
 second generation after the war. As slaves they were a prolific 
 family. This is the blessing that freedom brought. 
 
 Rachael was boss of the milking place for more than thirty 
 years until my father's death. There would be from 15 to 30 cows 
 to milk night and morning and she had three or four girls or young 
 women to go with her and a boy to mind the gate and only let in 
 as many cows at a time as there were milk maids, so that each calf 
 would get one-half the milk while the milker got her share. In 
 good weather the milking was done at the gate between the calf 
 lot and the cow pasture, but in bad weather at the large shed which 
 was near the negro quarters. Every woman on the farm was 
 taught to milk, so when there was a large number of cows to milk 
 every woman would go to help milk except the cooks and house- 
 maids, and have a boy on a horse and one on foot to help with the 
 cows and calves, and old Rachael was boss of that business. 
 
 Among my earliest recollections of fun and frolic and real boy- 
 hood pleasure was going to the sugar camp with old Rachael and 
 with all the boys and girls, white and black, from about eight years 
 of age up to sixteen or seventeen years old, to make home-made 
 sugar (maple sugar and syrup), and old Rachael generally had one 
 or two of the older women along to help her, more especially to 
 manage "the kids" and keep them from worrying her beyond all 
 endurance. This grove of about tvv^o hundred and fifty sugar trees 
 was about midway between my father's residence and my grand- 
 father's residence, and was conveniently accessible frorri either place, 
 and the youngsters from both places were generally at the sugar 
 camp early every good day. The camp consisted of a large rough 
 shed covered with clapboards and a furnace with six iron kettles 
 in it. At one end the kettle would hold at least forty gallons and 
 then continually less size to the other end reduced to about ten 
 gallons. After a good day's run of sugar water the two smallest 
 kettles would contain ten or twelve gallons of thin syrup to be 
 conveyed to the kitchen at home at night to be strained and boiled 
 down to a thick syrup, or stirred off to sugar cakes the next day 
 under the supervision of my mother. The process of sugar-making 
 was to fill all the kettles with water from the trees, and then 
 never put any water from the trees into the two or three smallest 
 kettles after the first filling, but after the large kettles were one- 
 half boiled down, replenish the small kettles from the large ones, 
 and fill the large ones from the trees, and by night you would have 
 
 34 
 
a nice thin syrup in the two smallest kettles, and the larger kettles 
 still containing the water from the trees. 
 
 All of the slaves of Kentucky were exposed to the machina- 
 tions and intrigues of the Federal Army and their abolition influ- 
 ence almost continually through the four years of strife, and it 
 seems strange that they did not succeed more readily in decoying 
 them away from their owners. This can only be accounted for by 
 the utter ignorance of the Northern people and the outside world 
 of a correct idea of the true relation which existed between the 
 slave and the owner. They had no conception of the peculiar 
 strong tie that existed between the slave as a slave to the owner, 
 and the owner as an owner, a protector, and a guide to the slave. 
 The slave was a part of the owner's money and in the wise provi- 
 dence of God had been instead of its love being a root of evil, was 
 made a shield and buckler for the slave and an incentive for the 
 elevation and advancement of that human being from dense igno- 
 rance, degradation, and filth to civilization and Christianity, and all 
 of this wise providence was a mutual benefit to the slave and master 
 as well as to the advancement and up-building of God's kingdom in 
 the world according to His own wise way : "But while men slept 
 the enemy sowed tares." Thousands of the more sensible and valu- 
 able slaves remained with their owners after the close of the war, 
 and withstood the overwhelming tide of fanaticism for a time, but 
 like a struggling crew on a ship in a cyclone they were washed off 
 a few at a time until now after nearly half a century it is a rare ex- 
 ception that you will find a servant with his former owner or with 
 the family of the former owner. 
 
 There might be a great number of instances related of the fi- 
 delity and faithfulness of slaves to their owners and their families' 
 best interests during that horrid Civil War, and frequently at a ser- 
 ious risk for the slave, but the negroes soon learned that they could 
 with reasonable safety rely upon the fact that the Federal govern- 
 ment and soldiers would rely and act upon the hypothesis that the 
 slave would do anything within the bounds of reason to obtain his 
 freedom, and so long as the slave could keep them under that delu- 
 sion they could do a great deal in a clandestine way to protect and 
 serve the owners' best interests. There have been many instances 
 related, and not a few put in print, such as the following which has 
 been clipped from a Southern writer and many similar instances 
 could be truthfully related. 
 
 "Two negro men belonging to an army officer's widow who 
 lived with her young daughters on an Arkansas plantation, con- 
 veyed $50,000 in gold in the cushions of an ambulance to Houston, 
 
 35 
 
Texas — a place of safety from marauding troops, who burned the 
 house and cabins, and captured the Hve stock. The Yankees 
 would not molest escaping negroes. These were faithful to their 
 trust. Similar instances are numerous." 
 
 My father was passing through the grounds of his negro quar- 
 ters when he saw a lad about four years old laying on the grass 
 cutting many antics and didos, when he remarked to his mother who 
 was at work near by, "That lad reminds me of a cub bear." The 
 other negroes near by who heard what he said, after he got out 
 of hearing riged and joked the mother about the child and he got 
 the name of "Cub." I do not know what name his mother had 
 given him, but whatever it was he lost it and was called "Cub" for 
 the balance of his life, and was finally "Old Cub." This negro 
 stammered and stuttered badly, made a very poor out at talking, but 
 was a stout able bodied man about five feet, seven or eight inches 
 high, and was as faithful and reliable for any work that he knew 
 how to do as any man on the farm. Ke was never put to plowing 
 because he could not say "gea" or "haw" in time to keep from plow- 
 ing up the corn, but if he was told to drop the corn and put three 
 grains in a hill there would be three grains in every hill and no 
 more. If my mother wished to have the truck garden cleaned of 
 weeds and hoed over she would ask father to let Cub work in the 
 garden, and then if she told Cub to clean up the potatoes and the 
 onions and the beets, and any other vegetable, when she went out in 
 the cool of the evening to see the garden, as far as Cub had worked 
 that day there was not a weed to be seen and everything was in 
 perfect order. In cold weather, in fall or winter, when the other 
 negroes would cut up a lot of wood for the family room fire. Cub 
 did not need to be called to carry it and lay it on the large back 
 porch right near to the family room door and I imagine that Cub 
 dropped the last few sticks down a little harder than he had placed 
 the others, anyhow mother would lay by her sewing or a book she 
 might be reading and go to the cupboard or pantry to get a large 
 slice of pie or two or three sweet cakes, or whatever dainties might 
 be left from the last meal, to give to Cub. Then with his bows and 
 a broad grin he would be able to twist his mouth around to the 
 side of his face sufficiently to get out, "Thanky, Miss," and by this 
 time any one of the maids who might be in sight and earshot would 
 be so much amused that they would begin to titter and snigger with 
 laughter when mother would turn on them, and while she kept 
 her face as firm as she could, might rebuke them by saying, "Cub 
 don't tell half as many lies as some of you negroes do," and then 
 while the girl skipped quickly into the kitchen at the far end of the 
 
 36 
 
long porch where she could give vent to her excessive laughter, 
 while mother stepped into her room and closed the door where she 
 could shake her fat sides at the amusing occurrence, and Cub would 
 strut past the kitchen door and give a disdainful glance in as he 
 went by holding his good things up in full view to all the occu- 
 pants of the kitchen; and the darky in the kitchen, between her 
 laughs, might say, "Mistus say Cub don't tell lies. He don't tell 
 the truth neither 'ceps you give him a plenty time, and he couldn't 
 tell many lies if he try." There came a great freshet in the late 
 summer, and a small creek, the head-waters of Johnson Creek, which 
 passed through my father's estate, known then as the Funk Lands. 
 During a freshet this little creek overflowed its banks and washed 
 the fence av/ay on both sides and washed cut a water gap which 
 exposed a field of grov/ing corn to damage from a lot of cattle which 
 were grazing in an adjacent pasture. My father had the entire 
 force of farm hands with the horse wagon and the ox v/agon to 
 haul rails and rebuild the fence which was soon all completed except 
 the water gap and the little creek was still too flush to work in, 
 and it was a problem to know how to make that secure from the 
 depredations of the cattle (there was no barbed wire in those days). 
 He had a tall tree cut down which stood near by and it made a long 
 log which would extend across the creek and three or four feet 
 into the bank on either side, and then had a ditch dug on either side 
 to receive the ends of the log, and then the question was how to 
 get this long log into its place with the ends in the ditches, and then 
 it would be easy enough to cover the ends with dirt and rock so that 
 the water could not lift it out of its place, and thus make the corn 
 field secure. My father asked Jim and Lige and Herod and per- 
 haps others for their opinions as to the best way to get the log 
 where it was needed, and finally he turned to Cub who was stand- 
 ing back to one side with his arms folded and taking quite an in- 
 terest in what was said, and asked him how he thought was the best 
 way to get the log in place. Then all of the young negroes began 
 to titter and jump behind the large trees near by, two or three to- 
 gether, and peep out to see and then fall back to hide and laugh, 
 but Cub sprang to the large end of the log and then to the ditch 
 on the near side and then he went upstream and said, "Oxen pull it 
 here," pointing to the smaller end of the log, and pointing to the 
 far side, said, "Water help down." My father saw him go through his 
 motions, and his stammer, and said, "Cub's idea is a good one ; let's 
 pull the large end to the ditch on this side and hold it there while 
 we pull the smaller end up the creek, and then let Herod get on 
 the saddle-ox and pull the leg down stream. Get a strong skid 
 
 37 
 
on the far side that will keep the log from touching the bank until 
 it gets on top. Half of you go with Jim in the horse-wagon across 
 the creek and the others stay on this side to hold the log here with 
 spikes;" and it was very soon put in place, but the surprise and 
 great amusement was my father calling on Cub for his opinion. 
 
 Jim was my father's foreman for many years after Watt retired 
 from that position, and he willed Jim and a young fellow named 
 Bush, who drove his carriage when Jim wished to be excused, and 
 several other men and three women to my mother. Jim had com- 
 plete control of my mother's farm (about 500 acres of land) as long 
 as she lived. I lived about a mile away and he consulted me about 
 all matters of importance, but I consulted him about some farming 
 operations, because he had more experience than I had and was ar^ 
 extra good hand to raise crops and to take care of them. During the 
 war, Jim had two large cribs full of fine corn that he had raised, 
 and although my mother lived about three miles from any turn- 
 pike road there was a gate-way and a fairly good road to get to 
 her place, and a Federal officer had learned that the corn was in her 
 cribs, and brought eighteen wagons and loaded them from a crib, 
 taking about 540 to 550 bushels of my mother's corn. I saw Jim 
 coming in a gallop on one of the carriage horses, and I knew 
 something was going wrong, and when he related these facts to me 
 I told him there was only one thing that we could do and that was 
 to have mother get a voucher for the corn and I would try to col- 
 lect pay for it. My mother asked for a voucher giving the amount 
 of corn he had received. He wrote the voucher payable when she 
 proved her lopaltp, which stirred her Cunningham blood about to 
 the boiling point. She asked him where he was from and he re- 
 plied, "from Ohio." Then she turned on him, in her wrath, and 
 said, "When my father was helping to drive the British and Indians 
 from that country he had no idea he was helping to hand it over to 
 a gang of theives. If he had known as much as I know now he 
 would never have made his bed on the brush piles, and covered up 
 with the snow, and shortened his life for any such a gang of 
 thieves." Jim said, "the way Mistus talked to that Yankee scared 
 me." I was afraid she would make him mad and he would tear the 
 farm up, but he said something in a low tone to one of his men who 
 was very close to him, and he went away with his wagon train of 
 corn. 
 
 My mother had me to take the voucher to a rampant Union 
 man, from whom she had bought thousands of dollars worth of dry 
 goods in bygone days, for clothing the household, and asked him to 
 collect the claim. But after this man had failed to collect the debt 
 
 38 
 
for six weeks or more, I went to get the paper and the man said he 
 had mislaid the paper and could not find it. My mother never re- 
 ceived a cent for that corn, but Uncle Sam paid all it was worth for 
 it. "Loyalty" was very profitable in Kentucky at that time, 
 
 Jim had charge of my mother's farm as long as she lived, but 
 she died before the close of the war, and after her death and after 
 Lincoln's proclamation of freedom he lived in the neighborhood 
 for a few years, bought a cottage in Winchester where he spent the 
 balance of his life, and while he was living there I saw him fre- 
 quently and he called me by the same name from my early youth 
 to the day of his death, viz : "Master Binny." Several years be- 
 fore his death I made him a present which appeared to enlist his un- 
 bounded appreciation. I had a dress suit of broadcloth made, and 
 before I had worn it a half dozen times I had increased in flesh and 
 weight until I could not wear the suit at all, and in thinking of what 
 use I could make of them I concluded that they would fit Jim nice- 
 ly. The next time I saw Jim I told him if he would come to see me 
 right soon I thought I could make him a present that would fit his 
 taste. I explained to him that I had entirely outgrown my finest 
 suit of clothes, and I believed they would just fit him. He did not 
 make any unnecessary delay of the visit and the next time I saw him 
 after his visit he said no tailor could make a better fit for him than 
 they were. He lived only a few years after this. He died before he 
 was sixty-five years old. I was not at home when he died, but the 
 first time I saw a member of the family I was told all about his sick- 
 ness, death, and burial, and that he had made it known to all the 
 family that he must be buried in that suit of clothes, and concluded 
 by saying that he was the finest dressed corpse that has been buried 
 in this town for a long while. After his freedom, Jim assumed the 
 name of James Dudley, which I never could account for, unless it 
 was his admiration for the Rev. Thomas P. Dudley, a man of con- 
 siderable note in our community, who owned a farm in Fayette 
 County, Ky., and owned a few slaves. 
 
 Looking back for sixty years or more, as my mind's eye can 
 see distinctly, and then looking around us and seeing the daily oc- 
 currences which are forced upon our observation and attention, we 
 can get quite a distinct light if we take God's Word "as a light to 
 our path." His word is just as distinct and plain in regard to this 
 labor question as it is in regard to matrimonial relation. We might 
 have the most bitter opponent of African slavery, or in other words, 
 the most radical abolitionist to say all that could be said within 
 the bounds of truth against this slavery and admit all that can be 
 thus said. Then, in not one particular has the negroes' moral or 
 
 39 
 
physical condition been improved by freedom over what it would 
 have been if they had continued in slavery up to this time and in 
 their condition progressed with the balance of the world as they 
 would necessarily have done and there would have been at least 
 double the number of them that are now living. Lincoln's procla- 
 mation freed thirty-three for me, and I cannot now find or hear of 
 half of that number and their descendants. 
 
 Anthony and Andrew were the only two slaves that I owned 
 who were older than myself, and neither one of them was five years 
 older, and they have both been dead more than twenty years. Their 
 parents (Watt and Rachael) both lived, as slaves, to be more than 
 severity years old and they raised seven children to be stout, 
 healthy men and women, to be freed. And not one of them lived 
 to be sixty years of age, and nearly all died before they 
 were fifty years of age, and they have all been dead more than ten 
 years, and from this entire family and descendants there are only 
 four or five living and one of them blind and helpless. If freedom 
 did not mean extermination for that family then I do not know what 
 to call it ; and a more healthy, strong, hardy family of slaves would 
 have been hard to find. Of the entire thirty-three of my slaves of 
 all ages and sexes I am confident that there are not more than fifteen 
 of them and their descendants now living. If this is not extermina- 
 tion, what is it? If there had been no disturbance of God's plans 
 by "Satan's tares" until this time I am very certain that without 
 buying a slave I v/ould have owned or v/ould have given away to my 
 children at least fifty slaves, and in God's way we could have had a 
 happy, prosperous, and prolific advance. 
 
 But now, while I have four sons and three daughters prosper- 
 ing in this world, the thirty-three slaves are well nigh exterminated 
 by the crazy fanaticism which was produced by "Satan's tares," 
 v/hich has not only brought this destruction of the negro after that 
 shockingly cruel, bloody, and destructive Civil War with its untold 
 millions of debt and other horrors, and then left an interminable and 
 destructive strife between capital and labor which is entirely be- 
 yond the v/isdom and power of man to reconcile, because "the love 
 of money is the root of all evil," and it is beyond the power of man 
 to destroy that root. God, in His wisdom, had made this root a 
 shield and protection for labor by making labor an indispensable 
 part of capital, but Satan's strategy has subverted God's plan, 
 hence this interminable strife which greatly retards the advance- 
 ment and upbuilding of Christ's Kingdom in the civilized and most 
 enlightened portions of this world, while the most degraded and 
 heathenish people are either exterminated to give place for civili- 
 
 40 
 
zaticn, or neglected and left to self-destruction by degradation, 
 filth, and ignorance. But this is anticipating some what upon the 
 Live Issue to be discussed later. 
 
 I consider, Shepherd, the negro missionary to Africa from this 
 country, the greatest living man of the negro race, as he is well edu- 
 cated, very intelligent, and full of the grace of God, and he is spend- 
 ing his life, his best efforts and energy for the advancement and ele- 
 vation of the negro race in their native land; but I am convinced 
 that if those negroes that Shepherd comes in contact with in their 
 native land, could be subjected in slavery to civilized, intelligent, 
 and enterprising owners they would be advanced in civilization and 
 intelligence a vast deal faster and more effectively than Shepherd 
 or any other man can do this in any other way; because that was 
 God's way, and of course it v/ould be much better for the slave as 
 well as the master if the owner had the grace of God in his heart, 
 but even without this the owner's self-interest ("the love of money") 
 would impel him to advance the slave as much as possible, because 
 in degradation and ignorance the slave v*7ould be comparatively 
 worthless, while every advance that was made in intelligence and 
 capacity would enhance the slaves value and would therefore be 
 a great incentive to this end. 
 
 From the Leader evening paper of June 21, 1910, we copy the 
 following item : "Twenty-five killed in an explosion to-day. Work- 
 men in a quarry of Portland cement (Union men). Near Ogden, 
 Utah. Most of the killed were Japanese and Greeks." This is 
 merely a sample taken at random of similar occurrences recorded 
 almost daily of destruction of life in quarries and mines of various 
 kinds throughout the country, and the number of lives lost varying 
 from this, as a minimum, to sometimes hundreds. If these twenty- 
 five laborers had been Esquimo slaves they would have represented 
 at least $25,000 in that Portland cement corporation, and there would 
 have been every needed precaution taken to prevent such an acci- 
 dent, and the corporation greed which is nov/ so universally con- 
 demned would have acted as a life-preserver to protect these lab- 
 orers from harm, and all of this would have been in accord with 
 God's plan and no conflict between capital and labor. 
 
 The eld Scotch adage of "Like man, like master," was more 
 literally true with the African slave than with the Scotch white ser- 
 vant. The African is by nature an imitator, and I have known cases 
 which were very strikingly so, and very amusing. A gentleman who 
 owned a very faithful and valuable servant who had charge of his 
 master's blooded stock when they were being exhibited at the Coun- 
 ty Fairs and some of the State Fairs, was a very competent man that 
 
 41 
 
had been born and raised in his master's family. The master had 
 one defective eye which he kept closed most of the time and he had 
 a habit of clearing his throat before he began to talk and other 
 peculiarities, and when, in the absence of the master, gentlemen 
 would go around to the stalls to see this stock, this servant would 
 unconsciously close one eye, clear his throat, and go through with 
 his master's peculiarities, and his being utterly oblivious of the fact 
 made it the more ludicrous and amusing. This slave bestowed the 
 utmost care upon the stock, and appeared to get as much pleasure 
 and delight from receiving a premium as his master did. 
 
 In the months of April and May, 1853, I traveled over a con- 
 siderable part of the best agricultural sections of England and Wales 
 for six weeks in a carriage through Yorkshire, Durham, and pretty 
 much all of the best sections of both counties, and some little in 
 Scotland, and I became thoroughly satisfied that the laboring class 
 in that country at that time was not as well cared for and had not 
 as much of the comforts of life as the same class had in Kentucky 
 and Virginia. I had not traveled over the cotton States but had 
 traveled over Kentucky several times, and over Virginia sufficiently 
 to be thoroughly acquainted with the condition of the slaves in these 
 States and had good reason to believe that all of the slave States 
 lived in about the same way. The farmer and his family, includ- 
 ing his slaves, lived on the "fat of his land," eating and consuming 
 all of the best that his farm produced and selling what he could 
 not consume. The sun did not shine on any country on this planet 
 where there was more universal and unstinted hospitality than 
 prevailed throughout the slave States of America. That passage of 
 Scripture which says, "Be careful to entertain strangers" was as 
 universally and cheerfully obeyed as in any country in the world. 
 I have traveled on horseback and otherwise over Kentucky and 
 Virginia for weeks at a time and many times staying at farm houses 
 at night wherever my business and convenience led me, and was 
 hospitably and comfortably entertained by a family whom perhaps 
 I had never seen or heard of before. The last salutation would very 
 probably be, "If you ever come in this neighborhood again we will 
 be glad to have you stay with us" and with no more thought of pay- 
 ing or charging for the night's lodging than we would have thought 
 of flying — and human beings did not fly in those days. And all of 
 this was in accord with God's plan as revealed in His Holy Word. 
 A very large part of the wealth and affluence and comfort of these 
 States was on the farms and plantations, and nearly all of the far- 
 mers owned at least a part of the land on which he lived and at least 
 a part of the labor which they employed in their business, and it 
 
 42 
 
was reliable and stable, and those he hired were just as reliable as 
 his own, if they had not been he would not have employed them. 
 His labor was a part of his capital and therefore there was not the 
 least conflict between his capital and his labor, and it was little or 
 no inconvenience to entertain a wayfaring man. Mr. Frank Hasper, 
 a breeder of race horses, who resided in Woodford County, Ky., 
 made the following statement to me and I have not the least doubt 
 of its correctness: When he bought and paid for Impt'd Glenco 
 ($500 for the horse with a saddle and bridle) in one of the Carolinas 
 he had $2.50 in his pocket left from the deal, and he rode the horse 
 to his home in Woodford County, Ky., and had a comfortable lodg- 
 ing with supper and breakfast at a farm house every night, with his 
 horse well fed and groomed and sometimes he would stop in at noon- 
 time when he heard a horn blow and get his dinner and have his 
 horse fed, and when he arrived at home he had a little small change 
 left from the $2.50 with which he started ; having paid out the largest 
 part of the $2.50 for ferrying over the rivers he had to cross on his 
 way home and through toll gates which he had passed on turnpike 
 roads, and occasionally a dime to a boy for extra attention to his 
 horse. This kind of hospitality was the universal custom through- 
 out the slave holding States and it was no serious inconvenience 
 and it was in perfect accord with God's command and admonition, 
 as (see Hebrews 13: 2), "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, 
 for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." (Alluding 
 to Abraham in the Old Testament entertaining angels on their way 
 to Sodom) ; and (see Romans 12 : 13 — given to hospitality) ; and 
 (see 1st Timothy 1: 2), "A Bishop must be given to hospitality as 
 one of the imperative requisites for an officer in God's Church ;" and 
 (Thes. 1: 2 — is to the same effect). Now any matter which is of 
 such vital importance as to be repeated so frequently as this is in 
 God's Word should certainly receive serious consideration. 
 
 When the labor system was conducted in God's way it was 
 entirely practicable to heed this admonition, but now since the har- 
 vest of tares, it is frequently nearly an impossibility, though the 
 heart may yearn for the privilege ; all of which adds more testimony 
 to the truth that whenever man attempts to make any improvement 
 or change in God's way he is very certain to make a botch if he does 
 not commit a crime, and he is nearly certain to do both. 
 
 To look back at Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, at this 
 distance of nearly fifty years, it appears rather ludicrous, and I have 
 sometimes thought it was a case of extreme desperation. Thous- 
 ands of people of the Northern States and the outside world had 
 been brought by the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" literature and the pul- 
 
 43 
 
pit and political oratory of that day, to believe if the yoke of slavery 
 was only lifted then the slaves would rise in their fury and with the 
 hatchet and axe and corn-knife, and such-like implements of des- 
 truction, make a bloody feast for fiends of the decrepit old men and 
 women and children who were at home, as they thought, entirely 
 unprotected and at the mercy of the slave. All such fanatics must 
 have been bewildered, after months of waiting had passed beyond 
 the proclamation and not a drop cf bloodshed of the mistress or any 
 of her children by any slave. Is this not proof as true and strong 
 as "Holy-v/rit" that the outside v/orld knew little or nothing of the 
 real and true relation that existed between the slave and the owner. 
 Where, or how, did President Lincoln get authority to write that 
 proclamation? He knew that it was ignoring and over-riding the 
 constitution of the United States, and there had been no authority 
 given by Congress. If he had been the Czar of Russia, or of late, 
 even the Emperor of Germany, he might have fallen back on the 
 "Divine right," but no, it was just simply a military necessity. But 
 when you get down to the bottom facts it was to stir up and renew 
 the lagging enthusiasm of the Northern people, and it was well- 
 timed and had the desired effect on his people, and a correspond- 
 ingly opposite effect in a less degree upon the Southern people who 
 were then almost worn to a frazzle. But then what about the 
 slaves? More than two-thirds of them in the Confederate lines 
 and those did not hear of the proclamation perhaps for months after 
 it was issued, and some never heard cf it until after the close of 
 the war. Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri were within the Fed- 
 eral lines and of course the slaves of these states heard of it as soon 
 as their owners did. 
 
 I called all of my servants up that were of the age of discre- 
 tion and told them of the proclamation and that we would be com- 
 pelled to abide by it, and I said, "Any of you that wish to go where 
 you think you can do the best for yourselves and your families can 
 have my wagon and team and move your families to town and go 
 from there v.^herever you like. You must take care of yourselves, 
 now. You do not belong to me but any of you that wish to work 
 for me I will pay what is fair and right for your work, and you all 
 know that I have a good supply of provisions and can feed you and- 
 your families, but remember that I am free just as much as you are. 
 You must learn to take care of yourselves and make your own liv- 
 ing for yourselves and families." As soon as I stopped talking to 
 them a man named Albert, who I had bought the first year of the 
 war from a Mr. Lowe (a strong Union man) who had a blacksmith 
 shop and who owned a family of slaves and had brought this fellow 
 
 44 
 
up from early boyhood in his shop. He was about twenty-two years 
 old and quite a good mechanic, an excellent horse-sheer, and he had 
 been running my shop since I bought him. He said, "Master, you 
 know what I promised when you bought me ; that I would stay with 
 you until you said, 'go.' No matter how this war turns out you 
 will find me in that shop working right along like nothing had been 
 said, and you just do whatever you think is right and that will do 
 for me." And he worked right along and run that shop for five or 
 eight years after the war closed, and until I had curtailed my busi- 
 ness so that I did not need a shop, and then I went with him to see 
 a man who had a shop six or eight miles av/ay and helped him to 
 make a deal to work for that man as long as he worked at his trade, 
 but he finally v/ent the way of a large number of the best slaves 
 that I ever knew ; he killed himself with strong drink, and died com- 
 paritively young. He was the hardest slave to set free that I ever 
 owned, and was really as valuable a slave as I ever owned, although 
 I paid only $500 for him, and this is the way I came to own him: 
 I was riding from my house through a woodland pasture to my 
 mill and shop and stock barns about 3/^ of a mile distant from my 
 residence, and Albert was in the woods where he could see me when 
 I started from my house and could tell where he could meet me in 
 the woodland, as he did, and when I was within speaking distance he 
 took off his hat, and with a polite bow, said, "Sir, I would like to 
 talk with you, please." I could see at a glance that he was greatly 
 disturbed and excited, and he detained me there for at least a half 
 hour pleading his cause and insisting that I should go and buy him, 
 and finally I told him to go to my shop and stay there until I came 
 and I v»7ould go and see Mr. Lowe and if he would sell him at a mean 
 price I would buy him. I went and found Mr. Lowe in his shop 
 and told him that I had found a runaway in my woods that called 
 himself Albert and said he belonged to him, and he begged m.e to buy 
 him and I told him to go to my shop and stay until I came back and 
 I would come and see you. If you will put a low price on him to 
 me I will buy him running in the woods, or you can go home with 
 me and I will help you to find him. He finally priced him to me at 
 $1000.00, and that was the price he could have put him in the army. 
 I told him, "The last word your man said to me was that I could 
 tell you that he was not going in the army, that it was not his fight 
 and he was not going into it. I cannot afford to pay any such a 
 price as that. It may be only a little while until he is as free as 
 you are and you are helping to set him free." He said, "What will 
 you give me for him?" and I replied, "I will give you a check for 
 $500 for a clear bill of sale for him and take my chances for him run- 
 
 45 
 
ning in the woods, or you can go home with me and I will help you 
 to find him." He replied, "If I get him he will do me no good, and I 
 will sell him to you." He gave me a bill of sale for Albert and war- 
 ranted him sound and healthy and a slave for life, and in four years 
 Albert was as free as William Lowe or I either, but I made a good 
 bargain then and this was the last slave I ever bought, and I never 
 did sell one of my own. All the slaves that were with me when the 
 emancipation proclamation was issued remained with me for mon- 
 ths after that and most of them remained until the war closed and 
 some of them for many years after that. This man, Albert, had 
 some of the most practical, hard-sensed ideas of any negro that I 
 ever knew. He was working in my shop when the negroes received 
 the right to vote, and although I had never said a word to any of 
 them about voting or talked politics to them, when the election 
 day came he said to me, "You know that none of us negroes know 
 anything about politics, and I believe it is a fool notion to let any of 
 us vote, but there are lots of them going to vote and I have deter- 
 mined that if you v/ill tell me every time who you vote for I will 
 vote that same way, and then your vote will count two instead 
 of one." And he did this as long as he lived; and the man, Harve, 
 of whom I have written elsewhere, did the same thing. It was an 
 open ballot in those days and there could be no doubt about how the 
 votes were cast. There were several of my former slaves who did 
 not vote and paid no attention to elections. 
 
 I never had the pleasure of attending a 4th of July or Feb. 22nd 
 celebration by the negroes from two or three cotton plantations in 
 slave times, but from the descriptions I have heard given of them, 
 to witness one was to carry with you for the balance of your life a 
 most amusing recollection. Each plantation whose slaves were to 
 participate in the celebration would elect an "orator of the day," 
 or perhaps two from each plantation for the occasion, about a week 
 before the holiday to give them time to prepare their speeches and 
 get their extra apparel for the occasion; and then to see the six 
 or eight, or more, "orators of the day" step out with the master 
 of ceremonies, who was of course the "Big negro" of the neighbor- 
 hood, and these would have seats on the platform while the several 
 hundreds of men and women and boys and girls would hasten to 
 make themselves comfortable in any way that suited their con- 
 venience to get within hearing of the speakers, when the boss of 
 the occasion would step to the front and give each orator, besides 
 his own name, some high-sounding or ludicrous nick-name, and 
 as each one is mentioned there is no difficulty in designating him, 
 because as soon as his name is called he begins to bow and strut 
 
 4G 
 
around to show beyond doubt "that's me," and the celebration 
 begun, and to give an adequate description of the proceedings of 
 that occasion is entirely beyond my pen, pencil, or paint brush. 
 But the man who could murder the most of the King's English 
 in a given length of time in the most fantastic style and keep it 
 up for the greatest length of time, was the orator Vv^ho excelled. 
 A few anecdotes here may serve to suggest the idea and illustrate, 
 such as this : A negro woman lost her husband. He died intes- 
 tate and left four little infants on her hands. She went to the Pro- 
 bate Judge's office to be appointed executor. She found the Judge's 
 office and said, "Is you de reprobate Judge of dis cote?" "I am the 
 probate Judge." "Well, you's de man I's lookin' fur. My husband 
 done died detestable and left me four little infidels on my hands 
 and I's come here to be pinted executioner." 
 
 There was another that I have seen in print of a negro boy 
 who was interested in the welfare of Judge Billings. The Judge 
 was drinking water from a well in his back yard while his hired 
 boy was swinging on the back yard gate, and said, "I'm feared you'4 
 better quit drinkin' out'n dat 'ar well." "What is the matter with 
 this well?". ."Hit's pizen. Hit'll kill you. Go 'way! Don't you 
 know hit's don been scandalized by phrenologists, and hit's done 
 bin decided dat hit's two parts oxhide and one part hydrophobia. 
 Go 'way from here. Hit will kill you, sho !" 
 
 The negroes in the cotton and sugar producing States, where 
 there were generally more of them together, appeared to enjoy 
 life more and have a happier time than in the other States, 
 and besides this the climate was warmer and more congenial to 
 them. But they naturally incline to congregate, and they are much 
 better contented when there are quite a number of them together. 
 This appears to be a part of their nature which can not be bred out 
 of them. In their native jungles they lived in villages with their 
 huts close together, which was a matter of imperative necessity to 
 be in sufficient numbers to prevent the wild beasts from devouring 
 them, of which they were in constant danger from the most feroc- 
 ious kinds. 
 
 Henry Clay, the great Statesman and sage of Ashland, ad- 
 vanced the most practical scheme which was called gradual eman- 
 cipation, and if it had been judiciously carried out in connection 
 with a continual gathering-in or importation of a fresh supply of 
 degraded heathens from wherever they might be found, there would 
 have been some real philanthropy and wisdom manifested, and then 
 by this time this class of human beings would have been as scarce 
 on this earth as wild mustangs are on the plains of Texas and Mon- 
 
 47 
 
tana, and this world would have been immeasurably advanced in 
 every particular and strikes would never have been heard of in 
 this country. Mr. Clay's plan was for the Government to buy and 
 set free the slaves that displayed intelligence and capacity suf5cient 
 to prosper when left entirely to their own resources, if such desired 
 to be free; then to colonize these free men in Liberia, where our 
 Governm.ent would hold a protectorate over them, but the political 
 excitement was so intense between the abolitionists of the North 
 and the "fire-eaters" of the South that neither party v/ould give 
 much heed to his suggestion, and he died before the final dreadful 
 conflict commenced. Senator John J. Crittenden advocated this 
 plan of emancipation but his best efforts amounted to nothing. 
 
 This great Statesman, Henry Clay of Ashland — (to distinguish 
 him from Col. Henry Clay of Bourbon County, a gentleman of con- 
 siderable note and wealth who never participated much in politics) 
 owned quite a number of slaves — forty to fifty, of all ages. V/hen 
 Mr. Clay went to Washington if he went alone he would take one 
 man — his body-servant, but if his v.'ife vv^ent with him he would take 
 two men and a maid, and in those days he drove through from Lex- 
 ington, Ky., to Washington City in his carriage, v/ith tv/c men up in 
 front on the box of the coach with the woman on the front seat in- 
 side with the care of the youngest child, which of course must go 
 along. His man, Charles, vv^ould go always, and if any others, then 
 Aaron and his wife Lizzie Ann were to go. Charles v/as at one time 
 decoyed away from his master by the machination of some Yankee, 
 but very soon discovered the folly of his way and returned very 
 penitent to his master and remained vv'ith him as long as he lived. 
 It would have been a revelation and perhaps entertaining for a 
 Northern man or any person who v/as not familiar with slave life to 
 hear the conversation which would take place between a group of 
 the headmen of these slave-owners when they met at the County 
 Fairs or such like gatherings where they drove the family carriage 
 to the Fairs for several days in succession and met for several hours" 
 each day and had their social chat. It might be Mr. Clay's Charles, 
 Major Shelby's Spencer, Capt. Cunningham's Riddle, I. Vanmeter's 
 Jim, Capt. Warfield's, Mr. W. Sutton's, Preacher Breckinridge's, 
 and a great many more that might be mentioned for this region 
 of country ; and remember that in those days more than two-thirds 
 of the intelligence, wealth, and affluence of the entire South v/as 
 in the country residences; in the cotton, rice and sugar countries, 
 more gorgeous and finer than in the other slave states, but through- 
 out the entire South commodious and comfortable homes for black 
 and white. The conversation among the servants would be like this: 
 
 48 
 
"Jim, how is your corn crop this year?" "Well, sir, we have got a 
 good crop of corn — better than average. We will make 12 or 14 
 barrels to the acre. We got a good stand this spring, and when it 
 was about six or eight inches high there come a dry spell on us; 
 hardly a drap of rain for about three weeks, and I begun to git 
 scared, but about the time we got all the crop plowed over the 
 second time there come a good rain, and it rained right even on 
 ahead all night, a slow, study rain, then you never did see corn grow 
 off like it did. We had to hurry up to plow that corn over twice 
 more before it got too big. While we were givin' it the last plowin' 
 it was away up along the horses' sides, and it never did lack much 
 for rain after that. It is about ready to cut now, and it is a good 
 crop. Our wheat was a little pinched by that dry spell, and then 
 it got too much rain before it was cut and the rust got it a little, 
 but we just get it thrashed the other day. We had a little more 
 than one hundred acres, and we will git about two thousand bushels. 
 We have got it all safe in pens where it will keep safe and dry for 
 twelve months. It aint worth much. I don't know what we will 
 do with it, but we have got it in a safe place. It can stay right 
 where it is for twelve months to come without any damage." "Well, 
 Jim, what are you going to do with all that corn?" "Do with it? 
 Lord, man, you never heard of having too much corn on our place. 
 Every shock of that corn will soon be settin' up like a sugar loaf 
 and then it will stay till the frost gets right heavy, and by that time 
 two hundred of our cattle will go to New York as fat as hogs with- 
 out a 'year' of corn, but the other fifty, master will put on some of 
 the best grass right jining the corn field, and then he will say, 'Now 
 Herod, you git your ox team and take one of the boys and give the 
 cattle three shocks of that corn every morning, and git the corn 
 from the middle of the field while the weather is dry and when it is 
 muddy haul from next to the fence.' We will shuck out thirty or 
 forty acres of our corn. I think we have got two or three pens of 
 old corn, now, but the sows and pigs will get all of that and the 
 fatenin' hogs will get some of it before we shuck the new corn. 
 We have got plenty of corn in the crib for the horses and bread. 
 But along about the first of December you will see master git his 
 leggin's on and strike out on old Bob, with his cattle whip, and he 
 has done told me the day before he was going away for a week or 
 two, and he tell me about work enough on the place that he wants 
 done to keep me and all hands busy for a month, and then when he 
 rides by he will holler at me loud enough for everybody to hear, 
 'Jim, keep things going here while I am gone,' and he has started 
 Master Solomon out the day before down towards Maysville to buy 
 
 49 
 
cattle and then he goes over the river into Madison County and 
 all them counties on that side of the river, and you wont hear of 
 either of them maybe for two weeks or more, but when they do come 
 you will see more than 100 cattle in front of them. They tell me 
 that sometimes Master tells Mistress that he believes the cattle 
 Solomon bought are better than the ones he bought and did not cost 
 any more money. They all say he can buy cattle as well as any- 
 body. But the next oldest son, Isaac, he lives with his grandfather. 
 We don't see much of him." "Riddle, don't he buy all of your 
 cattle?" "Yes, old Master never goes off to buy cattle. The young 
 man buys all our cattle except what old man Cockreil brings down 
 from the mountains. He com.es down just as regular as the month 
 of October comes and brings 75 to 100 half-scrub cattle and turns 
 them into our front pasture and then rides up to the stile and takes 
 off his bear-skin from his saddle and his saddle bags and goes on 
 right into the house and on into Master's room without ever knock- 
 ing at the door, and puts his saddle-bags in the first corner he 
 comes to and throws his bear-skin down in front of the fire and 
 falls down on it and sticks his feet with his moccasins on up to 
 the fire and his old blue jeans huntin' shirt on, and if Mistis aint 
 in there, maybe when she goes in there she will find the old man in 
 there fast asleep. She calls him old Si, and when the old man 
 wakes up she will say, 'How are you. Si? Pretty tired, I guess.' 
 'Yes, Madam, I have been driving cattle ever since daylight and I 
 am tired. Where is Squire Cunnigin?' 'I don't low he will git to 
 see the cattle to-night.' And then the old man will turn over and 
 go to sleep again and Mistress go on about her business just like he 
 was not there; but when old Master comes in the old man will get 
 up and stretch himself and get on a chair and go to talking. Then 
 old Master, he will say, 'See you have been riding hard all day ; how 
 would a little old whiskey go?' and the old man will jump up and 
 say, 'Now Squire, if you say so, we will try that,' and they go in 
 the other room to the side-board and when they come back that old 
 man done forgot he v/as tired. Next morning they ride down 
 among the old man's cattle for about an hour, and then the young 
 man, Master Isaac, has to go to Lexington to the Bank to get 
 silver money to pay for that old man's cattle. They say he won't 
 take gold and he v/on't take paper money, so they have to take the 
 old man's saddle-bags and bring him silver money. Sometimes he 
 stays at our house two or three days before he starts home. They 
 tell me that old man has got six or seven thousand acres of that 
 mountain land and raises every one of them cattle. He has been 
 bringing them cattle every year regular for eight or ten years." 
 
 50 
 
(Riddle to Charles) "Charley, did you bring Mr. Clay up to 
 our house that time when he and Mr. Webster and another gentle- 
 man come up there, or did Aaron drive the carriage that day?" "I 
 am the very fellow what drove the carriage that day when you all 
 gave that big barbecue." (Riddle) "Well, what was that other 
 gentleman's name?" "Wy, that was Mr. Pindexter (Poindexter). He 
 was from down South somewhere and that was one of the biggest 
 days I ever did see." (Riddle) "Well, I recon it was. About two 
 days before that, Master called me up just before night and told me 
 he wanted me and Jack to have the two carriage horses ready before 
 breakfast to git away as soon as we got our breakfast, and he wanted 
 to send us away on an errand, and he said, 'I'll tell you more in the 
 morning, and ycu tell John and Josh to ask Mr. Webb what two 
 horses they are to ride and they are to go as soon as they get their 
 breakfast.' I knowed that somethin' was up and next mornin' he 
 called me and Jack and he give me a note and Jack one, and he tell 
 us, 'Mr. Clay and some more gentlemen will spend the day with me 
 tomorrow, and this note is to invite all the gentlemen around here 
 to come to our barbecue tomorrow. Now you take this note and 
 go down by all the Cunninghams and Hutchcrafts, and on down the 
 Paris Road as far as Mr. Brutus Clay's, and then cut across to Mr. 
 King's and come back by Mr. Tom Cunningham's, and you tell your 
 Master Tom to notify everybody around Clintonville, and you ask 
 every gentleman you show this note to to please invite all of his 
 neighbors to come ;' and he told Jack the same thing and he sent him 
 half the way to Mt. Sterling, and told him to go by the Goff's and 
 Gay's and Anderson's and Sphorr's and Judy's and on to Mr. Skin- 
 ner's Mill, and then come back by the Gist's and Lewis' and Bean's, 
 and back that way. Well, I believe he sent Big John out by the 
 Harrison's and Fishback's, and Taylor's, and on down that way 
 to the river, and then he come back by the Quisenberry's, and the 
 Hampton's, and on up that way home. I think he must have sent 
 Josh over to the Renick's, and after old man Fry. He was an old 
 Frenchman and couldn't talk much like our people, but he could 
 butcher a beef and carve a ham as well as any man that I ever did 
 see, and when I got home that evening just before sun-down, don't 
 yer know him and Mr. Webb had one of the very finest fat steers 
 on the farm, all quartered and hanging up in the spring house; 
 dressed as nice as ever you see a chicken, and I do believe that beef 
 would have weighed 1500 pounds, and he was as fat as a hog. I 
 reckon I showed my note to twenty people that day, and I got to 
 Mr. King's just as his horn blowed for dinner and when he read the 
 note he said, "Well, man, our dinner is about ready. You had 
 
 51 
 
better give your horse a few 'years' of corn and come around to 
 the kitchen and the cook will give you your dinner." So I took 
 dinner with Mr. King and then come on up the road to Master 
 Tom Cunningham's, and through Clintonville and by the Stepp's, 
 and the last man I showed my note to was Gen'l Pendleton — about 
 two miles frorh home. 
 
 When I got home and see the big fat beef hanging in the spring 
 house and the row of tables fixed along side of the locust grove 
 about fifty yards, with cotton tacked all over it — then a long row 
 of big kettles hanging on poles. Mistess has sent to the sugar 
 camp and got the kettles out of the furnace, and then she had all 
 of her wash kettles, and there must have been eight or ten kettles 
 hanging in a row, and I could tell that meant soup for a big lot of 
 people. They had put wood under all of them, and under two big 
 kettles at the upper end of the row they had a big fire already burn- 
 ing, and when I looked in I saw about a half dozen fine bacon hams 
 cooking for tomorrow, and they had dug a ditch a little way from 
 the kettles to barbecue the beef next day, and they had three or 
 four wagon loads of wood ready to make the fire. Next morning 
 early old man Fry was down in the grove cutting up that beef and 
 fixing it for cooking and getting out the bones for soup. But I did 
 not see anything more down there that day. Mistess called me and 
 Jack before breakfast and said she wanted us to stay right at that 
 kitchen door to wait on her and the women that were in the kitchen 
 and dining room, and then Mistess was in both them places at the 
 same time just as nigh as she could get, and when she was not giv- 
 ing me and Jack orders, here would come Peggy and Lizzie and Cin- 
 dy and Mandy, one right after tother, and every one of them giving 
 orders, and they kept us both moving; and Mistess she went down 
 to the soup kettles soon in the morning two or three times, and 
 then between nine and ten o'clock she went down there agin and 
 that time she took Jack with her and I did not see Jack no more 
 that day, but she come back pretty soon and she and them women 
 just kept me on the jump till about three o'clock. But just a little 
 while after she come from down at the kettles that time she was 
 going from the dining room to the kitchen and Mr. Clay came right 
 in on the back porch from down towards the locust grove and met 
 Mistess right at the kitchen door with her sleeves rolled up to her 
 elbows and sich another hand-shaking and joking and laughing as 
 they did have right at the kitchen door." (Charles) "Yes, Master 
 told me down at the lower gate he would get out, and he opened 
 that gate and then he told me to drive on up to the front stile and he 
 went to the stable and then walked up through the locust grove and 
 
 52 '- 
 
I did not see any more of him until I heard him on the front porch." 
 (Riddle) "Well, sir, after he and Mistis had laughed and talked 
 there a little while they went on in the dining room and she intro- 
 duced him to some ladies in there, and after they talked a little 
 while there she went with him on into her room and introduced 
 him to a whole lot more in there, and after a little while I heard him 
 talking louder than any of them out on the front porch. But there 
 was sich yelling and hollering out there in front I could not tell 
 what v/as going on. But Mistis come back before long and then 
 she and them women kept me on the jump till about three o'clock 
 before I got a mouth full of dinner. Then Liza beckoned to me at 
 the dining room window and when I went there she handed me two 
 great big plates full, one of them stacked up with roast beef and 
 ham and bread and all kinds of vegetables they had in the house, and 
 the other had pie and cake on it, and she told me to take a cup and 
 go to that jar there and get some milk. Then I went out under the 
 old locust tree in front of the kitchen door and there was some 
 chairs out there. I put the plates on one chair and I got another, 
 and you'd better believe I hid every scrap on them plates before I 
 quit." (Charles) "Well, sir, when I got up to the stiles Capt. Cun- 
 ningham and Gov. Clark and Squire Harrison and Major Moore and 
 some other gentlemen, I did not know, come walking from the 
 porch and met us at the stiles and when they found Master wa'nt 
 there, some of them asked, 'Where is Mr. Clay?' and Mr. Webster 
 said he got out at the lower gate and said he would walk up, and 
 some of them said, 'He is playing a joke on us now!' But Capt. 
 Cunningham said, 'He will turn up alright.' Come walk in gentle- 
 men, and they all walked on up that pavement right through a 
 big crowd of men, shaking hands and introducing all the way along 
 from the stiles to the front porch, and that front yard was full of 
 people and every once in a while they would smack their hands 
 and holler, and about the time these gentlemen got-up to the front 
 porch with Mr. Pindexter (Poindexter) and Mr. Webster here 
 come Master out of the house with his hat off and when the people 
 see him come out you never did hear such laughing and whooping 
 and hallooing and smacking their hands, and then they were shak- 
 ing hands and talking for a good while before these gentlemen 
 went into the house, and then I drove my carriage around to that 
 big tree out in the lot and there were horses hitched to every low 
 limb on that tree, but I put my carriage right where the sun was 
 going to throw the shade pretty soon and out of the way of the 
 horses and then unhitched my horses and put them down in the 
 stable, and when I crossed the branch I let them have all the water 
 
 53 
 
they would drink before I got to the stable and then put them 
 in two empty stalls where there was a rack of good hay, and I went 
 over to the crib and got an armful of corn and give them six 
 "years" apiece, and fixed them there all safe, and then I went up 
 through the grove just like Master did, and when I got up close to 
 where Mr. Webb and the hands were I heard one of the bo3-s say, 
 'There is Mr. Clay's man,' and when Mr. Webb heard that he look- 
 ed up and when he saw me said to me, 'Man, maybe you had better 
 take this v/hile you have got a chance,' and he handed me a tin 
 plate full of bread and a slice of ham and of beef and said, 'Just 
 take a cup and go to one of those kettles and git a cup of soup,' 
 and I thanked him and obeyed orders ; and about that time I 
 heard somebody up toward the front calling loud, 'Come dov/n here, 
 gentlemen, and git some dinner;' and in a few minutes you could 
 not see that long table from one end of it to the other. The men 
 were three deep or four deep on both sides. Well, when I got as 
 much as I wanted to eat I begin to look around and I see a platform 
 with about two dozen chairs on it, and I could see there v/as where 
 the big men would be after dinner ; I went up around by that cane- 
 patch — you know that platform was about sixty feet from the 
 lower yard fence by the cane-patch and about the same distance 
 from the upper end of the long table, and right at the upper end 
 of the locust grove where most all of them were in the shade. So 
 I set down on the ground right against the big corner post where 
 all three of the post-and-rail fences come together in that big 
 corner post, so I would git in nobody's way and could see and hear 
 everything up on that platform; and it was not long before I could 
 see Master and a lot of gentlemen coming dovv^n from the front 
 porch, and then the crowd gathered around, and that post and rail 
 fence on two sides of that platform had men sitting on it as thick 
 as blackbirds git on a limb, and one big fat man got on that big 
 corner post right over my head and stayed there most all the time 
 they were speaking, and every once in a while he would holler as 
 loud as an Indian. Master, he spoke first, for about an hour, and 
 every once in a while the crowd v/ould holler so loud he would 
 have to stop till they got done ; and after he quit then Mr. Web- 
 ster spoke for more than half an hour, and they hollered over him 
 about the same way, and then Mr. Pindexter he spoke for half an 
 hour, and then a little bit of a man got up that would not weigh 
 more than about 130 or 140 pounds and he had light colored hair 
 and blue eyes, and he had no more show for beard than a woman, 
 and I thought they must be mighty nigh done now, but I tell you 
 that little man fooled me. He could out-talk any man of his size 
 
 54 
 
that I ever did hear and they made as much fuss over his talk as 
 any of them. He was from up about Mt. Sterlixng, and I think they 
 called him Dick Menafee. Well, when he got done Gov. Clark, 
 he got up and he kept that crowd laughing and whooping for a 
 half an hour, telling jokes on Master and everybody that had been 
 saying anything that day, and then the crowd broke up and I slipped 
 over the fence and got my horses and hitched them to the car- 
 riage, and Master and the other gentlemen were not ready to go 
 for more than a half hour after that, but we got home before dark." 
 (Spencer) "Riddle, wa'nt you in the army with Capt. Cun- 
 ningham?" "Yes, I spent one mighty tough, hard winter 
 upon them lakes. It is awful cold up there in the Vv'inter. I did 
 not have much hard work to do. We had plenty of men to do the 
 work . But it was so awful cold up there you had to keep close to 
 the fire to keep from freezing. I did not have to go out much only 
 to attend to our horses and get wood to keep a good fire and wait 
 on Master. But he was cut more than I v^^as, but he wrapped up 
 in his buffalo (buffalo overcoat) and overshoes so he could 
 stand the ccld. Our company was not in but one big battle. They 
 had some little fights and they called them skirmishes, but the 
 battle of the River Raisen was a rousing big one and a lot of men 
 were killed and wounded. We had some men of our company 
 killed and one of our near neighbors, Mr. Frederick Stipp was 
 badly wounded, and when they brought him into camp Master 
 came with him and after the Doctor got through v/orking with 
 him. Master told me to stay right with Mr. Stipp and take good 
 care of him and do whatever Doctor told me to do for him, and 
 then I didn't see anything more of Master for about two weeks, 
 and by that time Mr. Stipp began to set up and hobble around a 
 little, and when Master come back I went with him, and Mr. 
 Stipp never did get in the company any more, and I never did 
 see him until we come home, and he heard we had got home and 
 he come down to see us, and he had come home before we did be- 
 caused we stayed until the war was over. About a year after 
 that Mr. Stipp's wife had a boy baby and he named him Isaac Cun- 
 ningham, and that child growed up to be a fine man. When he was 
 nine or ten years old he would ride on a horse along with his 
 father, and Mr. Stipp would be going to town riding through our 
 farm. Our place was right betv/een his house and town. When- 
 ever Mr. Stipp would see me he would come to where I was and 
 shake hands with me and have something to say. That boy al- 
 ways called me Uncle Riddle, and he has got a brother named John 
 
 55 
 
that was born before the war. He is a fine man, too, and treats 
 me mighty well." 
 
 Nov/ the foregoing is a fair sample of the kind of conversa- 
 tion usually carried on and enjoyed by the more intelligent class of 
 slaves when they met and had leisure hours, and they were the 
 most contented as well as the most efficient and satisfactory class 
 of labor on this earth up to the war of 1860, and this labor system 
 was thoroughly in accord with God's plan as it is revealed in His 
 holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament as it ever had been 
 from the time that Noah left the Ark, through the days of Job on 
 to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob — all through the patriarchal 
 era, sanctioned by God's prophets and was the universal custom 
 throughout the entire era of the rise and fall of the Roman 
 Empire, which embraced the entire civilized world in its time 
 and included the time of our Savior's sojourn upon the earth, 
 and His apostles after Him, and sanctioned, upheld and indorsed 
 by Jesus Christ, our Lord, and by His chosen, inspired foUov/ers 
 after Him; a God-ordained relation, just as the marriage relation; 
 and never was as much abused by the sins and wickedness of man 
 as the latter always has been, as the innumerable cases of divorces 
 throughout the world abundantly testify with their constantly 
 varying wails of woe which come in a continual stream before the 
 courts. No doubt, but that as mean men have owned slaves as ever 
 have married a wife. But the wicked man loved his money and 
 the slave was a part of his money and his love of money was at 
 least a barrier, if not a shield and protection for the slave against 
 his meanness, and besides this, the laws of the Commonwealth fur- 
 nished full as much protection for the slave as it did for the wife. 
 
 I believe the highest type of a man I have ever known or read 
 of who is directly descended from Africa and an ex-slave is Rev. 
 Wm. Shepherd. I have met him and heard him preach and am in- 
 formed that he was born at Wanesborough, Va., and was educated 
 at the Tuscaloosa School and Seminary for the education of men of 
 his race, and he is a missionary to Africa and is devoting his best 
 efforts for the elevation of those benighted heathen negroes to a 
 knowledge of their Creator, and in the pursuit of what he considered 
 his duty he went contrary to and conflicted with what King Leopold 
 of Belgium considered his rights and best interests in a huge and 
 profitable gum-rubber business, which the King is having con- 
 ducted in that country. Shepherd did something which so aroused 
 the King's indignation and wrath that he was arrested and the 
 King appeared to be determined to "do him up," which the Chris- 
 tian people of our Southern States soon heard of and it at once 
 
 50 
 
raised such a furious excitement throughout the South that it soon 
 spread to the reHgious people of the entire Union and this brought 
 Uncle Sam "up standing" to his full height, and he finally lifted 
 his big stick and held it so high that the shadow of it reached to 
 Africa, and on to Belgium, and finally Uncle Sam spoke out in tones 
 that were heard in Africa and in Belgium: "I say. King, that is 
 my man you have got," and when Leopold heard that, he said to 
 Shepherd, "You oan go," and then he went quietly and meekly 
 back to earnest and faithful labor in the jungles, and I have some 
 hope that in the providence of a merciful God he may be the means 
 of saving the souls of some of those ignorant and benighted crea- 
 tures ; but I believe he is sailing, as it were, against wind and tide 
 in laboring among a people who need to be raised first by God's 
 plan to a sufficient degree of intelligence to enable them to compre- 
 hend the Divine truth which he so earnestly tries to teach them. 
 While I have an abiding sympathy and tender regard for Shepherd 
 and his life work, I am sadly certain that much the larger portion 
 of the African negroes will be exterminated by the present process 
 of civilization, instead of being civilized by God's plan, of which 
 Shepherd and others in cur country are bright and shining ex- 
 amples. But Shepherd is trying to follow in the footsteps of Paul, 
 as Paul followed in the footsteps of our Lord and Master. Paul 
 was arrested, tried, and finally killed by wicked government au- 
 thority because of his faithful and persevering service of our Lord 
 and Master. Shepherd was arrested by the authority of the little 
 2 by 6 King, and but for the over-ruling providence of God in raising 
 our big stick he might have met Paul's fate. 
 
 Booker Washington's pedigree is much shorter back to the 
 jungles of Africa and his ancestral mammy's degradation and 
 heathenism than King George's is back to the lost tribes of Israel 
 and to Abraham, the man that I have drawn on so largely for testi- 
 mony in laying the foundation for slavery and the jurisdiction of it 
 in this book, and Booker's pedigree is certainly as well authenticated. 
 He says in his London interview that "None of us wish to go back to 
 Africa," and we can but give him credit for worldly wisdom in this. 
 "There would be no White House dinners there now." Mr. Roose- 
 velt has come home and Booker does not wish to associate with 
 the lions and tigers and elephants and such like, so there is very 
 little left in Africa to attract him. We quote from the Leader 
 (evening paper), taken from a two-column interview in the Lon- 
 don Post — "The negro problem in the United States will right it- 
 self in time, and the American negro has not the slightest desire 
 to return to his ancestral Africa," and "England is a country that 
 
 57 
 
people of my race hold in the highest esteem and reverence, on 
 account of the noble part taken by the English people in the 
 struggle for the abolition of slavery." Booker is correct about this, 
 because it must be admitted by all who are acquainted with the 
 truth of history that but for English influence and power, slavery 
 would have been in full force to-day in America and Africa and 
 most probably in both North and South America, and in many 
 islands of the sea; and all of this testimony is the strongest that 
 he could give to corroborate statements written in this book before 
 he gave this interview, and we quote again from the same : "Wash- 
 ington is the famous founder and principal of the Tuskegee, Nor- 
 mal and Industrial Institute for students of the negro race in the 
 state of Alabama," and again — "Mr. Washington, who has had an 
 honorary degree conferred on him by the University of Harvard, 
 and was received at the White House as an honored guest during 
 the Presidency of Mr. Roosevelt, was born a slave, and his story 
 is as inspiring as that of any of the heroes of Mr. Smiles' "Self 
 Help" and may we add in parenthesis (they may be very much of 
 the same character) but be that as it may, we quote from the same 
 source: "The negro problem you know is the problem of the man 
 'fartherest down,' and I want to ascertain at first hand hov/ the man 
 v^'ho is farthest down in Europe lives and works, and I believe that 
 when America comes to a more accurate understanding of the diffi- 
 culties which the masses of the working people in other parts of the 
 world have to struggle against, it will have gone far tov/ards solv- 
 ing v/hat is called the race problem." Just how Booker is to solve 
 his problem by seeing how the "Italian Hobo" and the "Polish 
 Jew" live in their native land, we confess, is beyond cur imagina- 
 tion, because we know that both of these classes which he desig- 
 nates as "farthest dov/n" are flocking to our country by the mil- 
 lions to better their condition, which is known to be far worse in 
 their native land than the masses of the Southern negro is, even 
 after deducting the few hundreds of those who are v/ell-to-do, even 
 now after freedom, and we all know that this class is far worse off 
 now than when they had their owners to feed and clothe and pro- 
 tect them, and would be much worse off now than they are but for 
 the philanthropic sympathy and interest still lingering in their 
 former owners and their children for them ; and this is a very good 
 explanation and reason for Booker's statement, "That they prefer 
 to remain in their own Southland." But here is one other quota- 
 tion that I must not fail to put in: "In Scotland, by the way, I 
 shall pay a visit to Mr. Carnegie at Skibo Castle to-night." Booker 
 has one characteristic of the negro fully developed as any man of 
 
 58 
 
his race that I ever read of. From my early youth I have known 
 and frequently seen demonstrated that peculiar contempt mingled 
 vi^ith pity, with which the "rich man's" slave negro estimated what 
 that negro regarded as "poor white folks" and the reverse of that 
 sentiment is just as prominent. But here is another quotation 
 from the same paper of a later date which puts the capstone on the 
 pedestal of Booker's glory: "HONORS — showered upon Booker 
 T. Washington at capital of Denmark, Copenhagan, Oct. 4, '10 
 King Frederick yesterday received Booker T. Washington, and 
 conversed at length with him on the subject of the colored race. 
 His Majesty asked the American for a copy of one of his publica- 
 tions. Later, as the guest of prominent Danes, Mr. Washington 
 motored to Roskilde, the old capital, where he visited a school and 
 had lunch. Last night he dined at the palace, meeting the mem- 
 bers of the royal family, including Queen Mother Alexandra, the 
 widow of King Edward of England." 
 
 Booker Washington is the shrewdest and most practical man of 
 the "world-kind" of any ex-slave or man from African descent that 
 I have ever read of. He uses his politics to as great an advant- 
 age for Booker as any of our loyal men of the South during that 
 old war ever used theirs to their very best financial interest and 
 for their own glory. Booker manipulated his politics to secure 
 him a big White House dinner, and then used that circumstance to 
 get higher up from that time on, and finally to obtain an inter- 
 view with a London paper, and then another big dinner v/ith the 
 Royalty of Europe. It would be hard to find the record of a 
 Southern man, during the old war which can beat that for glory. 
 And besides all this. Prof. Washington is deeply interested in 
 skimming the cream off the rising generation of his race and mak- 
 ing all out of them that he can for himself and for them, and after 
 he skims what he can, if all the balance goes into the pig-trough to 
 be consumed by the hogs the Professor cannot be held responsible 
 for that. 
 
 Taken, all in all. Shepherd and Washington are a long way 
 the highest and brightest trophies left from African slavery in 
 America. But besides these two there may be several hundred 
 others who are as well, or better off than they would have been 
 as slaves; and then after these, what about the millions as the 
 Professor puts it — "furtherest dov/n" and I fear continually getting 
 further down? Are they to be left in the trough and exterminated 
 in an unequal contest with the millions of foreign labor which is 
 pouring in a constant stream like a flood into our country? Is 
 this the blessing that freedm brought them? But before Prof. 
 
 59 
 
Washington gets to his work with them we will see what the 
 Southern people are doing for the rising generation of the negro 
 race ; and then Washington skims the cream off of this. I give the 
 following, taken from our daily paper here in Lexington, and it is 
 but a fair sample of what is done in nearly all the former slave 
 states and nowhere else: 
 
 "COLORED TEACHERS INDORSE PROVISION FOR 
 EDUCATION OF THEIR RACE. 
 
 INSTITUTE CONVENES. 
 
 Superintendent Mrs. Nannie G. Faulconer and Others are 
 
 Thanked. 
 
 We desire to thank our honorable superintendent, Mrs. Nannie 
 G. Faulconer, for the interest she has manifested in the negro schools 
 of Fayette County and also for the many suggestions and good ad- 
 vice she has given us during the session of the teacher's institute. 
 We also desire to thank Prof. E. H. Clarke, Rev. E, L. Bakerville 
 and Rev. G. V. Morris for the very excellent addresses they gave 
 before the institute. 'All children regardless of race, creed, sex 
 or social station or economic conditions of their parents, have 
 equal rights to and should have equal opportunity for such educa- 
 tion as will develop to the fullest possible degree all that is best 
 in their individual natures, and fit them for the duties of life and 
 citizenship in the age and community in which they live. We 
 indorse the accepted policy of the states of the South in providing 
 educational facilities for the negro youth, believing that whatever 
 the ultimate solution of this grievous problem may be, education 
 must be an important factor in that solution. We believe that 
 the education of the negro in the elementary branches of education 
 should be made thorough, and should include specific instruction in 
 hygiene and home sanitation for the protection of both races. We 
 believe that in the secondary education of the negro youth em- 
 phasis should be placed on the subject of agriculture, the indus- 
 trial occupations including nurse-training, domestic science, and 
 home economics. We urge upon school authorities universally 
 the importance of adequate buildings, comfortable seating and 
 sanitary school accommodations for the negro youth. We believe 
 that the better education the negro has, the better citizen he will 
 make. Therefore we advocate the higher education of the ambit- 
 ious and deserving negro. We advocate the all-around education 
 
 GO 
 
— the education of the heart, hand and brain.' The resolutions are 
 signed by L, W. Taylor, Laura Bogan, G. S. Johnson, Resolution 
 Committee. Following are the names of the teachers in attendance 
 at the institute: Birdie Taylor, Laura Bogan, Emma Whitley, 
 Mildred Hill, Susie H. Johnson, Helena Turner, Mary E. Graves, 
 Clara Howe, Mattie Caldwell, Edna Munda, Leon Smith, Fannie 
 Jackson, Margaret Upshaw, Anna Jones, L. W. Taylor, B. C. Green, 
 B. D. Black, T. S. Johnson, J. H. Johnson and Emma Clayborne." 
 
 Now all of this is from the spontaneous sympathy, kind feel- 
 ing and interest, felt by the former owners and their children for 
 the former slaves and their children in an earnest and unselfish 
 effort to advance and elevate them in the scale of civilization and 
 intelligence. You see no special effort of this kind in behalf of 
 the Italian immigrant or the polish Jew or any other class in our 
 country who are little, if any, higher grade of civilization than the 
 negro after slavery. Nor do you see in the northern or western 
 states, where African slavery never existed, any especial effort 
 made in behalf of the negro. But in their minority and weakness 
 among the whites they are left to "sink or swim," "survive or per- 
 ish" in a contest with a large majority of those who have a jealous 
 antipathy and prejudice against them, and with their former pro- 
 tection and shield clean gone they are left to their fate, which is 
 gradual extermination — the final result of emancipation. 
 
 But there is another man who has recently had his name fre- 
 quently in the papers, and he calls himself Jack Johnson, and must 
 be a very stout, able-bodied man, just such as fifty years or more 
 ago would have sold for a good deal of money for practical and use- 
 ful purposes, and could no doubt have been taught to break more 
 than 300 lbs. of hemp per day, which would have made his labor 
 worth more than $3.00 per day ; but has now become the champion 
 prize fighter of America, if not of the world, and has recently whip- 
 ped the white man at that game of scientific brutality, and by this 
 great feat the papers say he has made enough money to buy a 
 $60,000 residence on Tony-Row in New York City, right among 
 the aristocracy and millionaires of the city, and now of course he 
 is no "nigger," and if not, then what is he? I suppose he is just a 
 "What is it?" But this great victory he has gained has made him 
 a hero to receive the great admiration of a large majority of his 
 race, and so excited them in many localities where there were large 
 colonies of them that they became so boisterous and demonstrating 
 and insulting to the whites in their vicinity that they raised riots 
 and commotions which terminated in violent death of not a few 
 of the negroes and some whites, and required the strong arm of 
 
 61 
 
the law to suppress. In Philadelphia and Pittsburg and Ohio and 
 Illinois and many others of the Western and Southern States there 
 were more than twenty of these disturbances chronicled in one 
 weekly paper immediately following the fight which took place at 
 Reno, Nevada, and this is unmistakably a convincing testimony 
 as to the trend and tendency of a very large majority of the race. 
 But here is another hero of a much darker hue that we chronical 
 with sorrow and dismay as still stronger proof of the certain doom 
 to final extermination of the race in this country, because we know 
 this is no rare exception, but only a sample of such as you find al- 
 most daily in the papers : 
 
 "NEGRO KILLED AFTER HE SHOOTS POSSEMEN. 
 
 One of His Pursuers Dead, Two Fatally Hurt and Five 
 Others Injured. 
 
 MOB DRAGS BODY. 
 
 Chief of Police is Finally Successful in Getting the 
 Corpse to Morgue. 
 
 (By Associated Press.) 
 
 Huntington, W. Va., Oct. 14 — Two persons were killed, two 
 fatally wounded and five others seriously wounded in a fight for the 
 capture of George, alias "Red Johnson," a fugitive negro. He shot 
 and probably fatally wounded Detective George Lentz when the 
 latter attempted to place him under arrest, and shot seven members 
 of the posse before being taken dead. 
 
 The dead are George Bias, railroad brakeman, and member of 
 the posse, and George Johnson, the negro fugitive. The fatally 
 wounded are: Charles Hale, shot through the lungs; George 
 Lentz, detective, shot through the back. 
 
 The seriously wounded are: W. W. Lowe, policeman, shot 
 through left side; Charles Stuart, shot in the head; G. D. Thomas, 
 shot through the arm; William Hutchison, shot through the arm; 
 Ira Harold, shot in the leg. 
 
 After fatally shooting Lentz the negro escaped into the hills 
 back of the city and barricaded himself in a cliff where he defied 
 arrest. A posse led by blood hounds soon trailed the negro. When 
 he saw the posse approaching the negro opened fire and Charles 
 Hale, who was following the hounds, was shot. 
 
 63 
 
A moment later George Bias fell with a bullet through his head. 
 The posse retreated to wait reinforcements. When it advanced 
 the second time Johnson opened fire. During the battle Chief of 
 Police Clingenpeel climbed to the top of the cliff where the negro 
 was barricaded, and getting the drop on him, shot him dead. The 
 body rolled out into view and a mob dragged it down the hill to 
 the city limits. Chief Clingenpeel addressed the crowd, which ap- 
 parently was bent on mutilating the body, and succeeded in getting 
 it to the morgue. " 
 
 The negro had been shot nine times. Little is known here of 
 his identity. He is said to have come from Virginia, and to have 
 had a brother killed by the officers at Williamson, W. Va,, last Jan- 
 uary." 
 
 This desperado now enlists the unbounded and idolatrous ad- 
 miration of a very large majority of his race, and is a fair sample 
 of negroes of which Mrs. Beecher Stowe and others wrote such 
 hair-raising, and dreadful accounts of the bloodhounds and the 
 cat-o-nine-tails, but if he had been a slave he would have had no gun 
 but would have found his place where he would have done six 
 honest days work during nearly every week in the year, and would 
 have been made useful, if not ornamental, and in all probability 
 would never have killed any man and would never have been 
 killed. 
 
 This book contains certainly abundant testimony to prove to 
 and satify any rational and unprejudiced mind who is willing to 
 accept God's Word as contained in His holy scriptures, as credible 
 truth ; that slavery as it was organized and instituted in the South- 
 ern States of this Union prior to 1860, was divinely instituted, and 
 if so, consistent with God's general arrangement for the civilization 
 and elevation of the entire human race in the best possible way, 
 from the condition which at that time they were in to the highest 
 degree of civilization attainable for each several branch of the 
 human race. 
 
 The owner of the slave, as a rule belonged, of course, to the 
 higher type and class of civilization, and because of this owner- 
 ship of the slave was not compelled from necessity to perform 
 the daily manual labor and drudgery, and could therefore bestow 
 the entire time of life to the cultivation and expansion of intellect 
 and mental development, while the very fact of this ownership 
 carried with it as a general rule a rural and out-of-door country 
 life, conducive all the more to the fullest physical as well as mental 
 development and the highest type of humanity. 
 
 63 
 
While the African race, as slaves, from the time they v/ere 
 brought from their degradation ("The man lowest down," as Booker 
 Washington has well said) — in the five to eight generations through 
 which they have come up, have made full as much advance in the 
 scale of civilization and intelligence, because they were brought 
 in accord with God's plan — "The Way of Wisdom." And the 
 Esquimo and other tribes of little, if any, higher grade of humanity 
 than the original African negro, could have been just as well 
 brought up in the same way from their degradation, to have made 
 efficient and very valuable labor instead of leaving them in their 
 degradation for extermination by small-pox and filth, in dense 
 ignorance, while being continually driven back further and yet 
 further North into continually more miserable and horrible con- 
 ditions by Satan's plan of civilization. 
 
 We are curious to know v;hat disposition will be made of this 
 subject by quite a large number of intelligent Christian people, 
 not confined to the Northern and Western portions of our country, 
 but throughout the world, who have been brought up to condemn 
 African slavery as it existed before 1860, just on general princi- 
 ples and without any regard for God's precepts or plans and a 
 large majority of these people have never heard or read anything 
 in regard to this institution except condemnation. What will they 
 do with it? They dare not go to the Bible because if they do 
 they will find nothing there to condemn it. It is as much a God- 
 ordained institution as marriage. They are compelled to close 
 that book and ignore its precepts while they seek elsewhere for 
 testimony with which to condemn it; or better still, just laugh 
 the case out of court or ignore it altogether. "Nero fiddles while 
 Rome burned," but the fiddle did not put the fire out — It burned 
 out. 
 
 There were, perhaps, more than a million of Eskimo 100 years 
 ago, which were excellent material of which to make slaves, as well 
 adapted to the Northern and Northwestern States of this country 
 as the African negro was for the Southern and Southwestern States, 
 and for a large part of South America and the tropical Islands, and 
 away on toward -the South Pole, there were no doubt just as suit- 
 able material in every respect for slaves which could have been 
 just as well adapted to the colder portions of the Southern hemis- 
 phere; and if God's wisely devised plan for the civilization and 
 propogation of these heathen had been adhered to to this day, 
 there would not have been a heathen of this kind and character on 
 this earth by this time, but instead there would have been, as there 
 was when the Roman Empire was in the zenith of its prosperity and 
 
 64: 
 
glory, about as many slaves as free citizens in the "New World," 
 and the slaves would have been as contented and happy, and as 
 efficient and satisfactory labor as the Southern slaves were in 1858 
 and before that time. 
 
 One hundred years ago there were at least one million Esqui- 
 mos in our North country, including Greenland, and they have 
 been pressed North, and still further North by the Satanic process 
 of civilization and extermination, until now from the best informa- 
 tion that can be obtained there are less than ten thousand of them 
 left, and this remnant still in their degradation of heathenish 
 filth and ignorance; when there should have been 20 millions of 
 able-bodied, efficient slave laborers in Northern and Western 
 States of this country from these people, and every one of them 
 would have heard and known of the omnipotent God that created 
 them and this world, and many of them would have been faithful 
 followers of Our Lord and their Redeemer, and all of this would 
 have been in strict accord with God's plan for having the "heathen 
 for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His 
 possession." 
 
 Somebody, and some nation, is more or less responsible for 
 this dereliction and wickedness. By this day, with the increase of 
 the output of gold in the world, there would have been at least 
 twenty-five million millionaires and one-half millionaires and one- 
 quarter millionaires in the United States, besides many millions 
 more would have owned and lived on their farms with their slaves 
 and their estates worth from $25,000 to $100,000, and one-third of 
 their estate would have consisted of slaves, and about one-third in 
 real estate, and the balance in money and luxuries, and these men 
 of affluence would have resided upon the landed estates, scattered 
 broadcast over this country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, 
 and from the Gulf to the ice-bound North, and there would not have 
 been a man within the bounds of this slave country worth one-third 
 as much as Jno. D. Rockefeller, and New York City and Chicago, 
 or any of these large cities, would have contained not more than 
 one-half of the population which they now have, because a much 
 larger part of the wealth and affluence would have been on the 
 farms. And as it was throughout the slave States before they 
 were freed, so it would be now — you could travel in an automobile, 
 or a vehicle, or on horseback, from Maine to California, and from 
 the Gulf to the Northern boundary of our country, and have com- 
 fortable lodging at a country residence every night, with a good 
 square meal night and morning, without one cent of cost, and this 
 would be considered only customary hospitality to "entertain 
 
 65 
 
strangers" according to our Lord's command, and according to the 
 universal custom throughout the slave States before 1860 — and 
 that horrid Civil War. 
 
 "A war that emancipated one race and impoverished another; 
 that uprooted a whole civilization, involving vaster consequences 
 than follow the fall of a dynasty or the wreck of an empire. It 
 was the 'about face' of a continent and of an age. It was the con- 
 vulsive roar of a thousand unchained thunders. Four years of a 
 war that startled the laughing waters of peace into an incarna- 
 dined flood equal to centuries of schooling," which paralyzed the 
 highest type of civilization that was in this world, and wiped out 
 and destroyed the Divinely planned, and most consistently wise 
 system of labor that has ever been or ever can be devised for man, 
 because it was God-given and destroyed by Satan's strategy. "But 
 the surrender at Appomattox was not to be the close of this dreadful 
 drama." Far worse was to come — "the half has not been told." 
 "The horrors of 'Reconstruction' were at hand. The war closed, 
 indeed, but it closed in colors of a stormy sunset, to be followed on 
 the morrow by black clouds of poverty banked up in mountains and 
 shot through with red streaks of crime and murder." "Appomattox 
 was the brook Kedron over which the South passed to a Geth- 
 semane of Horrors — eight years of them, where every landscape 
 v/as marred by ruins, where every breath of air was a lament and 
 every home a house of mourning." But after malice and greed had 
 been satiated there still remained the indestructible and unquench- 
 able blood and breeding transmitted from the ancestry of 1776 to 
 1781, who had thrown off the tyrant's yoke of oppression then and 
 planted the indestructible seed of liberty and equity which sprang 
 up afresh through the ashes that remained from the conflagration 
 of malice and greed which had swept like a beasum of destruction 
 over cur beloved Southland and left but the ashes. And now when 
 fifty years have not yet passed after all of this, it is to-day the 
 fairest and m.ost prosperous portion of this, the greatest nation on 
 earth, with less turmoil and strife between capital and labor than 
 any other section or country. But it is only a question of time when 
 the negro labor which is continually retrograding and becoming 
 less efficient, may finally become more unscrupulous and anarchi- 
 cal than the other while it is being superseded and absorbed as fate 
 has decreed that it shall be. 
 
 As I have said before, the institution of marriage was devised 
 by infinite wisdom the same as the institution of slavery to bless 
 and elevate mankind and to serve as one of the principal bulwarks 
 to protect and advance the highest and best interests of humanity 
 
 G6 
 
in all ages, and it is a remarkable fact that throughout the Bible, but 
 especially the New Testament, when one of these institutions is 
 referred to the other is almost invariably associated in the same 
 chapter together. Satanic strategy has abolished one and badly 
 shattered the other, and now if it were possible for his majesty to 
 wipe out the other he would have this old world in a condition 
 which should satiate at least for a time his majesty's most fiendish 
 desires, and there is no doubt that the institution of marriage has 
 always been much more abused and has now vastly more excuse 
 and cause for its abolition than could ever have been justly brought 
 against the God-devised plan of heathen slavery — the divorce. Mills 
 that are continually grinding out their interminable grist of separa- 
 tion and termination of the marriage relation throughout our coun- 
 try, and in fact throughout the world, is overwhelming testimony 
 of this, to say nothing of the hundreds and thousands of the con- 
 stantly occurring murders of wives by husbands and husbands by 
 wives. To verify what has been written here we give the follow- 
 ing well-authenticated statistics produced by Prof. Elwood of Mis- 
 souri : 
 
 "DANGER TO THE NATION. 
 
 Columbia, Mo., Nov. 2. — Charles A. Ellwood, professor of 
 sociology at the University of Missouri, figures that at the present 
 rate of increase of divorces, before the end of the century one out 
 of every two marriages will result in divorce. He has figures to 
 show the rapid increase that has been made. In 1885 American 
 courts granted 25,000 divorces, as against 24,000 for all the rest of 
 the v,7orld. In forty years, therefore, the divorce increase has been 
 three times as great as the population increase. 
 
 The ratio of divorce and marriage in America now, he says, 
 is one to twelve. In France it is one to every twenty-five ; in Ger- 
 many one to every forty, and in England one to every four 
 hundred. 
 
 In Missouri, according to the professor's statistics, one divorce 
 is granted to every eight marriages. In the State of Washington 
 there is one divorce to every four marriages. In Colorado and 
 Montana the ratio is one to five, and in Texas, Oklahoma and In- 
 diana is one to six." 
 
 If Satan could bring as powerful political lever to bear upon 
 this institution of marriage as he wielded against African slavery 
 he could very soon bring on more strife and bloody carnage and 
 chaos than he did in the other struggle, but thank God, we have 
 in His blessed book one assurance as to this that we did not have 
 
 67 
 
as to the other — it assures us that there will be marrying and giving 
 in marriage here when Christ returns in glory to reign upon this 
 earth, and if there could be placed upon our National statute book 
 one plain, short, iron-clad law, and have it rigidly enforced upon 
 the rich who marry the titled aristocracy as strictly as on the com- 
 mon people it would reduce the number of divorces in this country 
 a good deal more than half. 
 
 Just make it a penal offense for either party to a divorce to 
 marry while the other party is still living, and if this law was 
 rigidly enforced it would prove a great blessing to our nation. But 
 if Satan could just give this old world free love as thoroughly as 
 he has given us free labor this would surely satiate his majesty 
 for a time at least. 
 
 To find a chapter in the Word of God which bears forcibly on 
 this whole subject and at the risk of recapitulation, let's go back 
 to Paul's epistle to the Ephesians, 6th chapter; and remember, he 
 addressed this epistle to a slave-owning people, and to all who 
 should come after, from that time until the second coming of 
 Christ. The first four verses of this chapter are addressed to 
 parents and children, and then in the same strain and as of the 
 same importance, commencing with the 5th verse, "Servants, be 
 obedient to them that are your masters, according to the flesh, with 
 fear and trembling in singleness of your hearts as unto Christ." 
 And 8th verse, "Knowing that whatsoever good thing a man doeth 
 the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bound or free." 
 9th verse, "And ye masters do the same thing unto them (your 
 slaves), forbearing, threatening, knowing that your master also is 
 in Heaven, neither is there respect of persons with Him." And 
 then in the 10th verse he refers to parents and children, masters 
 and slaves, all alike, who love the Lord, Jesus Christ, and accept 
 Him as their Lord and Master — "Finally, my brethren, be strong in 
 the Lord, and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor 
 of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." 
 And then mark well this 12th verse, "For we wrestle not against 
 flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against 
 the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked- 
 ness in high places (with Satan as Commander in Chief), whereof 
 take unto you the whole armor of God that ye may be able to with- 
 stand in the evil day, and having done all to stand." Then the 16th 
 and 17th verses, "Above all, taking the shield of faith wherewith ye 
 shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take 
 the helmet of Salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the 
 word of God." Taking the shield of faith — in other words, accept- 
 
 G8 
 
ing the Word of God with implicit confidence as truth and right- 
 eousness, and in preference to any other way; then by this means 
 you shall be able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked, that is, ye 
 shall overcome and vanquish all of the machinations and strategy 
 of Satan, and with this helment of Salvation wisely and practically 
 used by the civilized world it would have been a shield for a tem- 
 poral as well as it is for a Spiritual and eternal Salvation, and the 
 sword of the Spirit (the Word of God) should have been an effect- 
 ive and sufficient weapon with which to defend, protect and main- 
 tain the right, which is God's way, if all of God's people had stood 
 together to maintain His way. But Satan's strategy and the tares 
 that he sowed throughout the greater part of the civilized world 
 appears to have deceived quite a large number of even God's elect. 
 
 There might be many other passages of Holy Scripture brought 
 to the support of what has here been written, perhaps fully as 
 strong as what has been used, but considering this subject already 
 so thoroughly based upon Bible truth, and so well supported by 
 God's Word, we consider further proof unnecessary. 
 
 The Bible is the inspired word of God, and besides this if any- 
 thing further imaginable could be needed — no book has been so 
 severely tested, so thoroughly investigated, so closely scrutinized. 
 It has been tried by every possible test. If there were anything 
 bad about the Bible we would have found it out long ago. After 
 all of these trials and tests we may still say of it, "Forever, Oh Lord, 
 is thy Word established." The Bible proves itself by what it has 
 done, by the way in which it has been preserved, by its teachings, 
 and by its influence on the world. For these reasons without 
 naming any others all rational human beings should without hesi- 
 tation or doubt accept God's Holy Book as' true and righteous al- 
 together. 
 
 "Righteousness exalteth a Nation, but sin is a reproach to any 
 people." 
 
 Righteousness consists in obedience to God's laws and giving 
 due heed to His admonitions and council. 
 
 "Sin is any wont of conformity unto or transgression of the 
 laws of God." The laws of God as well as His admonitions and 
 council are contained in the Scriptures which are recorded in the 
 Bible which consists of the Old and New Testament. 
 
 A Nation's righteousness invariably brings its own reward of 
 prosperity, peace and happiness to its people. National sin just 
 as certainly brings punishment of strife, adversity, distress and 
 misery to its people. The Ruler of Nations as well as of mankind 
 
 69 
 
and of all His creation "will not be mocked, neither will He restrain 
 His wrath and anger forever." 
 
 When I have already abundant testimony and facts to fully 
 and clearly set forth and establish all I wish to do in this "DEAD 
 ISSUE," an incident is recorded in the evening daily paper which 
 adds unquestionable and overwhelming additional proof of what 
 has been written. The following incident shows that there were 100 
 canoes with 50 stout, able-bodied men in each, of low, degraded 
 heathen cannibals, who by this day, according to God's command: 
 "Get your slaves from among the heathen," should have been, in- 
 stead of running naked in these primeval jungles, like jackals and 
 panthers, with a craving desire to eat a fat Englishman for a very 
 rare and dainty meal, should have been the property of some intelli- 
 gent enterprising Anglo-saxon— a part of his estate, "his money," 
 comfortably clad and well fed on beef, pork, corn and beans, and 
 other substantial and healthy food, and doing a reasonable day's 
 work six days out of nearly every seven ; in reclaiming that wilder- 
 ness of wealth and beauty in Africa and making it an agricultural 
 paradise to vie with our own lovely Southland, both for beauty and 
 for profit, and while doing all this being elevated according to God's 
 infinitely wise plan to civilization and a knowledge of the only living 
 and true God in the only practical way by which this could be done. 
 The clipping referred to follows : 
 
 "WILD MEN ATTACK GROUNDED VESSEL BUT ARE 
 REPULSED WHEN CREW TURNS ON THE HOSE. 
 
 New York, May 8, 1911 — After fighting off one hundred war 
 canoes full of cannibals while aground on a coral reef at the Womazi 
 Islands, German East Africa, the British steamship Kasenga has ar- 
 rived here. 
 
 From the day she sailed from New York, many months ago, 
 with a cargo of 100 mules and five locomotives until she reached 
 Sandy Hook on her return the Kasenga's voyage was one long ser- 
 ies of thrilling adventures. 
 
 While proceeding along the coast of German East Africa the 
 Kasenga ran aground on January 28th. It was raining and foggy 
 and Chief Officer Wooster did not get bearings until he saw a coral 
 reef sticking out of the water. The reef was between two of the 
 Womazi Islands. The Islands were apparently uninhabited, but 
 Wooster found them to be filled with birds and game. 
 
 Half an hour before high tide 100 war canoes with naked canni- 
 bals paddled toward the Kasenga. Each canoe held 50 men. On 
 
 70 
 
these islands the crew and passengers of a French mail boat were 
 clubbed to death ten years ago. 
 
 The crew of the Kasenga lined up with high pressure steam 
 hose. Of the 57 men aboard 44 were Malays, and they became panic 
 stricken as soon as they saw the cannibals. 
 
 When the cannibals were within ten feet of the Kasenga, the 
 hose was turned on them. The scalding steam drove the savages 
 out of reach, where they held a parley. Then they scattered and 
 commenced to row down the Kasenga from all directions. The tide 
 was full by this time and at the second attack the freighter's 
 engines began to turn, and she slowly moved out into deep water, 
 and was quickly clear of the reef. Then with steam pouring from 
 many hose onto the canoes the Kasenga escaped from the canni- 
 bals." 
 
 But for Satan's tares and strategy there v/ould not have been a 
 naked degraded heathen negro on the Continent of Africa, nor on 
 this earth by this good day, but instead there would have been many 
 millions of well-clothed, well-fed, civilized, useful, and happy 
 negroes, the property of intelligent, .enterprising, .God-serving 
 ov/ners, who would be rapidly converting Africa from its state of 
 nature to an Eden of beauty and profitable plantations; while the 
 gold and diamonds and as yet hidden and unheard of treasurers of 
 that continent would be only a small part of the real wealth of that 
 country, and that, as well as this country, should have been by this 
 good day dotted all over with school houses and to be used five 
 days of each week for school children and cleaned up on the 6th 
 day, and used on the 7th day for a Church to give the slaves the 
 gospel as it is recorded in the Bible; and all of this would have 
 been in accord with God's wisely devised plans and purposes and we 
 would never have heard of a strike in Africa or America. 
 
 In the autumn and winter of 1851-2 when I was in the eighteenth 
 year of my age I attended Hanover College in Indiana, for one 
 term, with eight or ten youths from Kentucky. We were known as 
 the Southern delegation, all boarded at the same house, and were 
 rather shunned by a majority of the other students and looked upon 
 as a squad of slave-drivers; while we felt quite confident that we 
 were the piers of any of them, and decidedly superior to any 
 ignoramus who did not know that by all of the laws of God and man 
 we had as much right to own our negroes as they had to own their 
 horses or any other property. 
 
 But we did not by any means realize the effective work which 
 the Uncle-Tom-Cabin literature and the fanatical political stump 
 oratory was having with the Bible, then already closed and its pre- 
 
 71 
 
cepts ignored. My few month's stay at that college opened up to 
 me a considerable revelation, but of course I could not realize that 
 it was possible for the constitution and laws of our country and the 
 laws of the Almighty God could be fanatically ignored and trampled 
 under foot without scrupple, and we basked in our own imagined 
 security, and lost no sleep in serious contemplation of what was so 
 soon to follow. 
 
 The Whig and Democratic parties were at that time in a des- 
 perate struggle for supremacy, with the then insignificant Republi- 
 can party just budding, and not sufficient to receive serious con- 
 sideration from the public at large. But ten years after that the 
 young giant had devoured what was left of the Whig party and we 
 all know what followed. 
 
 To-day this "Socialist" party, or whatever you choose to call it, 
 is fully as much developed and as far advanced as the Republican 
 party was in 1851 ; and at that time there were no telephones ; or 
 flying-ships ; and even electricity, nitro-glycerine, and many other 
 implements for destruction of life and property were not half as 
 much developed as they are to-day. Far be it from me to assume 
 the role of a pessimist, much less a prophet; I only give the facts 
 and the reader can draw the conclusion. I am not authorized to 
 assume the role of Jonah to Ninevah. 
 
 72 
 
THE LIVE ISSUE. 
 
 THIS LIVE ISSUE is the most vital, the most intricate, the 
 most world-wide, the livest issue before the civilized world, and it 
 is impossible for any or all human wisdom to make a permanent 
 settlement and a quietus of this issue. This strife between Capital 
 and Labor is the "Live Issue of the World," and so long as the 
 "Love of moneip is the root of all evil" this will continue to be a 
 "Live Issue" despite the most strenuous and utmost efforts of 
 human wisdom to reconcile this strife or make a permanent settle- 
 ment of the Issue. And more than this, despite the most strenuous 
 and earnest efforts of government and all the wisdom of man the 
 strife will continue to grow more bitter and the issue more irre- 
 concilable as the laboring classes along with the rest of the world 
 advance in civilization, education and general intelligence and the 
 love of money continues to be "the root of all evil." It appears that 
 with serious consideration these statements should become self- 
 evident, but if we prefer to live in doubt and hope then when we 
 look back through the past fifty years, since Bible slavery was abol- 
 ished and observe the rapid growth of strikes and the continually 
 increasing bitterness and strife between Capital and Labor and in- 
 vestigate the cause and effect, then the last lingering hope and doubt 
 will vanish and so far as all human effort can reach, leaves nothing 
 but despair. 
 
 When we get down to the bottom facts and foundation for 
 all of this strife, brushing aside all sophistry and subterfuge, it is 
 because the controlling powers and governments have been be- 
 guiled by Satan to disregard God's W^ord as it is plainly set forth 
 in the Bible, and to set aside and ignore the statutes, the advice, the 
 admonition and the wise council of the most High God, and have 
 undertaken to make an improvement upon God's way and instead 
 of getting their "slaves from among the heathen" that are "lowest 
 down," and so low that they require subjection to slavery according 
 to God's plan to elevate their mental capacity sufficiently to 
 enable them to comprehend the truths contained in God's Word 
 sufficiently to give them a saving knowledge of God and a crucified, 
 risen, and everliving Redeemer. This, God's plan, was one of propa- 
 gation and elevation for this class of human beings, which, when 
 thus brought up constituted the best, the most contented, and in 
 
 75 
 
every way the most satisfactory class of labor in the world. But 
 instead of this, Satan's plan is gradual, yet certain extermination 
 for these human beings with a constant effort on the part of greed 
 and the "love of money" to make serfs, far worse than slaves, of 
 any and all who from any cause or misfortune may be compelled to 
 subsist by daily manual, or menial labor, though the laborer in 
 many instances may be the superior, both mentally and morally of 
 the employer who strives to get the greatest amount of labor for 
 the smallest amount of money and with no concern whatever for 
 the prosperity, health or life of the laborer, and the laborer tries 
 to get just as much for his labor as he possibly can and has just as 
 ardent love for his dollars as the employer has for his hundreds and 
 thousands of dollars. If the laborer has only $20, $50 or $100, or a 
 few hundreds of dollars, whatever it may be, it is his entire estate, 
 little as it may be and he prizes it just as highly as the employer 
 prizes his thousands or hundreds of thousands, which is his entire 
 estate, and while the employer needs the labor to conduct his busi- 
 ness and the laborer is compelled to give labor to procure an honest 
 and comfortable living, there is no interest common to both em- 
 ployer and employee sufficiently strong to make a barrier or con- 
 geniality which will counteract or overcome that "Love of money" 
 which is common to both, as much a "root of evil" in one as in the 
 other a constant source of interminable strife between capital and 
 labor, which will continue as long as the "Love of money is the 
 root of all evil," and will continue to become more and still more 
 serious as each party to the contest increases in strength and power 
 by additional combinations. 
 
 The most casual observer can but be impressed with the gravity 
 and serious importance of this matter when we can seldom look 
 through a daily newspaper without finding some reference to, or 
 account of one or more strikes of more or less serious import, and 
 within less than one year there might be hundreds of clippings from 
 the daily press such as the following few which are copied, and 
 this first one refers to one which occurred in London years ago, and 
 has gone down in history as the "Haymarket tragedy" — fearful to 
 contemplate, but since that time many have occurred which were 
 little, if any, less shocking, yet of so frequent occurrence that the 
 world has become so accustomed to them that except to those in 
 the immediate vicinity of the occurrence they have comparatively 
 lost their terror and their shock; so much the more sad is this to 
 contemplate. 
 
 76 
 
"Lexington Herald, Nov. 3, 1910. 
 GRIM SPECTERS OF HAYMARKET RIOTS IN CHICAGO. 
 
 Inspector and Squad of 60 Policemen Charge Strikers With Drawn 
 Revolvers in City's Streets. 
 
 Fifteen Seriously Injured in Clash, Bleeding Heads and Faces 
 
 Numerous. 
 
 Manufacturer's Plant Attacked. 
 
 While this strike vjas on about 10,000 women garment-makers 
 joined in and the result was the following: 
 
 "FIVE THOUSAND BABIES OF STRIKERS STARVING. 
 
 Chicago Situation Arouses Committee Which Meets at Hull House. 
 
 Chicago, Nov. 27. — The citizens strike committee, which has 
 investigated the conditions in the families of the striking garment 
 workers, reported to-day that 5,000 babies were starving here as a 
 result of the labor war. The report was made at a meeting at Hull 
 House and a special babies' milk fund was started at once by mem- 
 bers of the committee. Estimates at the meeting show it would 
 take at least $100 a day to provide milk for the babies in actual 
 want, and the suffering appeared so great that $1,100 was contri- 
 buted by members of the committee. The fund is to be kept distinct 
 from other strikers' funds. The garment strike is no nearer settle- 
 ment than it was a week ago, according to reports of the unions, and 
 both sides have settled down for a long strike." 
 
 And while these two were in full blast in Chicago the following 
 occurrence was taking place in New York City, as taken from the 
 New York World : 
 
 77 
 
"November 2, 1910. 
 GENERAL STRIKE TYING UP CITY IS IN BALANCE. 
 
 Two Officials of Teamsters Union Are Given the Power to Call 
 Off Every Driver in the Greater New York at Any Moment. 
 
 The Longshoremen Pledge Walkout if Aid is Needed. 
 
 ISSUE UP TO MAYOR; POLICE TO LEAVE WAGONS. 
 
 Mr. Gaynor Denies That Threat to Stop Municipal Service Forced 
 Promise to Remove Guards From Vehicles. 
 
 Situation in New Jersey City Complicated, and Demand for Militia 
 
 is Likely." 
 
 In the great emergency in Ohio the services of the Ex-Presi- 
 dent of two terms and an aspirant for a third (Mr. Roosevelt), has 
 been secured to quiet the disturbance and we note what he does 
 and says, taken from the morning Herald of the next day : 
 
 (Editorial) 
 
 HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt touched a popular chord when in a speech 
 at Toledo, Ohio, he condemned in strongest terms the rule of the 
 mob as well as the injustice of corporations. It is as much the 
 duty of the law to put down the one as it is to prevent the other. 
 Order is Heaven's first lav/ and that must be maintained at all 
 hazards, or chaos results. (But right here let us be permitted to 
 inject this important fact that Satan's first law is disorder, strife, 
 and hatred, and since the abolition of the slavery which was accord- 
 ing to God's plan, and the continual eft^ort of capital to substitute 
 an abominable slavery which is contrary to and in violation of God's 
 plan and laws, Satan has the say and he is very certain to keep it 
 despite the very best efforts of Mr. Roosevelt, or any other man, 
 just simply because "The love of money is the root of all evil," and 
 it is beyond the power of man to counterbalance and regulate and 
 reconcile capital and labor as thoroughly, completely, and wisely, 
 as God in His providence had done before the abolition of slavery, 
 whereby, in His wisdom he had made the love of money and the 
 power of capital a potent force to elevate the most degraded and 
 
benighted and helpless, heathenish humanity to a higher and more 
 civilized and Christianized condition. But now, despite the most 
 strenuous efforts of the wisest and best statesmanship, so long as 
 the "Love of money is the root of all evil" there will be a continual 
 strife between capital and labor, an irreconcilable struggle. So long 
 as capital has a potent influence in control of government there will 
 be a constant, uncontrollable tendency to a God-forbidden, wicked,^ 
 enslavement, or worse still, a heartless serfdom which is controlled 
 by the supreme idea of obtaining the greatest amount of labor for 
 the smallest amount of money with an utter disregard for the source 
 from whence the labor comes. On the other hand, if labor gets an 
 over-powering control of government you have just as uncon- 
 trollable tendency to communism and final anarchy. Satan has got 
 the world between these two horns of the dilemma — choose ye which 
 ye will take. I know which it will be — a perpetual and bitter strug- 
 gle between capital and labor, and who is to be the judge as to the 
 real wrongs. 
 
 To show a crop of tares which is being gathered, I copy this 
 from the headlines of the Morning Herald, a daily paper: 
 
 "STRIKING RIOTERS ARE SCATTERED BY THE OHIO 
 
 MILITIA. 
 
 CLUBS USED BY THE SOLDIERS ON CROWDS. 
 
 No Mercy is Shown and a Deputy Mistaken for a Loiterer is Hurt.' 
 
 Columbus Car is Blown up and the Trouble is on. 
 
 Wounded Trampled Under Foot as Officers Force Mob Back. 
 
 Seventy-five Persons are Held at Police Station Following Attempt 
 
 to Dynamite a Car. 
 
 And then the headlines from the Leader, evening paper of the 
 same day: 
 
 "BATTLE WITH RIOTERS. 
 
 Missiles Hurled From Residences at Minions of Law, Many Arrests 
 
 Expected." 
 
 Now, what does all this mean? Simply this; that despite 
 all the wisdom of man and the best of statesmanship that 
 
 79 
 
can be devised, the machinery of Government has "jumped a cog" 
 in the State of Ohio, and there is great destruction of life and prop- 
 erty, and altogether a serious disturbance which is hard to rectify, 
 and by the time you get this righted up to run smooth in Ohio, it is 
 very liable to do the same thing in Chicago, or St. Louis, or Pitts- 
 burg, or anywhere that a strife arises with more or less destruction 
 of life and property and with a constant increase of bitter hate — an 
 interminable conflict between capital and labor brought on by 
 Satan's tares — "The love of money is still the root of all evil." 
 
 "Canton, O., Feb. 10. — More than 200,000 miners in Eastern 
 Ohio, Western Pennsylvania, and parts of West Virginia, may be 
 called out on a sympathy strike, as a result of the failure of the 
 miners and operators of Sub-District Five of District Six to reach 
 an agreement on wage differences here. 
 
 "International President Lewis of the miners, announced in the 
 conference this evening that the International Executive Board had 
 ruled that unless the operators of this sub-district agreed to the 
 miners' demands a general strike would be declared in all of the 
 mines in which these same operators hold interests. Twenty-four 
 coal companies, principally those with headquarters in Pittsburg 
 and Cleveland, are included in this. 
 
 "The miners of the Northern half of Sub-District Five have 
 been on a strike for months, and the fifth conference ended today 
 in a failure to adjust differences. There are 3,500 in the Northern 
 half of this sub-district. President Cassingham, of the Eastern 
 Ohio Operators' Association, pronounced Lewis' statement a bluff 
 and said it was merely political play." 
 
 ANOTHER BIG EXPRESS STRIKE. 
 
 "New York, March 3. — Three Hundred Drivers and Helpers of 
 the U. S. Express Company in Jersey City struck today, alleging 
 discrimination by the company against men who participated in the 
 big strike last fall. No wagons were sent out and business in the 
 Jersey City headquarters was at a standstill. 
 
 "The strike later spread to this city, and no wagons were sent 
 out from the companies' stables in either city. The trouble leading 
 to the walkout arose over the appointment of a driver who had been 
 three years in the company's service to the position of driver of a 
 money wagon. The men contend that the appointment was due a 
 driver who had been in the service twenty years." 
 
 For the purpose of setting forth the labor party's side of this 
 question, we reprint what we conceive to be a strong, though par- 
 
 80 
 
tisan, view of their case. These strike notices above given at ran- 
 dom, are only a few of a great number that might be selected from 
 the daily papers, which are seldom without similar notices of more 
 or less magnitude. And all of this is strong testimony of the bitter 
 and ever-increasing animosity which exists between Capital and 
 Labor, and which is utterly irreconcilable. 
 
 We reproduce this from "THE COMMONER," and it repro- 
 duces it from Lewis F. Post's paper, "THE PUBLIC," as follows: 
 
 "A STRIKING PICTURE FROM THE WORKINGMAN'S 
 VIEWPOINT. 
 
 In a recent number of The Public (Louis F. Post's paper), a 
 striking article written by Thornton West, was published. The 
 Commoner reproduces this article in full. It follows : 
 
 AS WORKINGMEN MUST SEE IT. 
 
 "Are there two kinds of law in the United States — one for the 
 rich and one for the poor man? Are the petty thief and the poor 
 criminal to be promptly and adequately punished while the rich 
 thief and the powerful criminal go unpunished, save for an occa- 
 sional fine during the stress of aroused public opinion? Are mem- 
 bers of organized labor to be prosecuted for capital crimes on 
 dubious testimony, while rich and powerful mine ov/ners can bribe 
 legislatures, can appoint governors, and state supreme court judges 
 can openly, defiantly, and violently trample under foot state and 
 federal laws, and with the aid of governor and militia — the latter 
 confessedly in the pay of the mine owners — suspend the writ of 
 habeas corpus, nullify all civil law, depose civil officers, deport citi- 
 zens, suppress newspapers, destroy property, and create 'lawful' 
 anarchy — with absolute impunity and without even a pretense of 
 prosecution by state or federal authority? 
 
 "From the viewpoint of organized labor and its sympathizers, 
 those questions constituted the real issue in the Boise trial. This 
 fact explains the deep and widespread suspicion and the expressed 
 bitterness against "the state" — that is, the prosecution in the Boisq 
 trial, and the denunciation of President Roosevelt for his untimely 
 and unfortunate classification of the three accused men as 'unde- 
 sirable citizens.' 
 
 "It is 'dangerous' and 'unpatriotic' to minimize the revelations 
 of the trial at Boise. Yet the labor troubles in Colorado and Idaho 
 are different only in degree from what happened in the street rail- 
 
 81 
 
way strike at San Francisco; from what happened in the Home- 
 stead tragedy; in the anthracite coal mining strikes; in the railway 
 union strike at Chicago, and a hundred other strikes of less impres- 
 sion on the public memory. 
 
 "On the part of organized labor, what is the meaning of this 
 unmistakable lack of faith in law and government, of this too ready 
 resort to primitive and barbaric methods to obtain justice as its 
 members see it? On the part of organized capital, what is the 
 meaning of this generally insidious, but when necessary, flagrant 
 and defiant violation and usurpation of law and government? Sure- 
 ly it is not merely a contention between employers and employes as 
 to whether or not wages shall be temporarily increased or reduced. 
 "Is not the present attitude of organized capital and of organized 
 labor the outgrowth of a different method of doing business on a 
 large scale, of a different spirit in industrial and commercial enter- 
 prises — the different method and the different spirit being the 
 product of the marvelous growth of corporations, especially of 
 trusts? 
 
 "Professedly, a trust is formed to reduce the cost of production 
 and to establish and to maintain prices that will be just and fair to 
 consumer and producer alike. In reality, a trust is formed to crush 
 out competition, to control the supply of the raw material and of 
 the finished product, to reduce wages, to make the price of the 
 product as high as the public will stand, and to limit the disburse- 
 ment of profits to as few persons as is practicable — in short, to prey 
 on the necessities of the people, to subordinate humanity to money. 
 
 "Are not the violence of labor troubles in the last twenty-five 
 years, and the most universal and unanimous condemnation of the 
 high-handed methods of railroads and all other monopolistic cor- 
 porations — are not these an expression of a profound popular dis- 
 content caused by the glaring injustice of special privilege on the 
 one side, and of constantly lessening industrial opportunity on the 
 other? 
 
 "Is not President Roosevelt's wonderful popularity due to the 
 fact that he has called a halt on the abuse of corporate power, and 
 has demanded at least the regulation of few special privileges? 
 
 "Are not the bitterness of organized labor and the strong popu- 
 lar feeling against monopolistic corporations potent proof that the 
 world old struggle is now being waged in this country more openly 
 and more fiercely than ever before — the struggle between those who 
 earn without getting, and those who get without earning? 
 
 "Do not the masses of the American people plainly see that 
 now, as never before in our history, all men are not equal before 
 
 83 
 
the law? It is universal knowledge that the officers of three of the 
 largest insurance companies in the world used trust funds for 
 speculative purposes, opened their treasuries to the devotees of 
 'high finance,' to the Wall Street sheep-shearers — all for greed, 
 for private gain. Not even one offender has been punished. 
 
 "The few men that autocratically control the railroads of the 
 country have brazenly violated law and equity, have treated the 
 public with defiant insolence, and have maintained lobbies to cor- 
 rupt state legislatures and congress. Yet the railroads owe their 
 very existence to special privileges granted by the people; and 
 every dollar used to build, to equip, and to operate the roads has 
 been furnished by the people, directly, or indirectly. 
 
 "These same railroad autocrats have 'won' hundreds of millions 
 of dollars by juggling railroad stock in Wall Street, while the 
 service and the equipment of the roads were not capable of handling 
 the freight offered them. There is no record of any stock manipula- 
 tor or railroad president being punished. 
 
 " 'Watering Stock' is a favorite pastime of 'high finance.' 
 Watering stock is but another name for stealing ; it is taking money 
 and giving nothing for it. Yet it places a heavy secret tax on the 
 American people and their prosperity. All of these hundreds of 
 millions of fiat stock must pay dividends, and the American people 
 will do the paying in the name of legitimate earnings, but in fact 
 for extortionate charges. A small group of men dealing in public 
 utilities and domestic necessaries, have made hundreds of millions 
 by v/atering stock. No stock-waterer, no dealer in fictitious prop- 
 erty, has yet seen the inside of a prison, by operation of law. 
 
 "The prices of nearly all the necessaries and commodities of 
 life are arbitrarily fixed by trusts. As a trust means no competition 
 — absolute control of the supply — the American people have no 
 other course open to them than to submit to being 'lawfully robbed.' 
 Notwithstanding this hold-up method of making money, the trust 
 magnate continues to be an eminently respectable and exemplary 
 citizen. 
 
 "The American people have been plucked of hundreds of mil- 
 lions of dollars by means of the 'Dingley Bill,' a protective tariff 
 law passed by a pre-election bribed congress, in consideration of 
 the munificent contributions in the first McKinley-Bryan campaign 
 — a bargain and sale that has no parallel in history for its audacity 
 in deliberately taxing all the people for the benefit of the few. 
 
 "After 'swollen fortunes' had been taken from the pockets of 
 the people, the 'Dingley Bill' promoters and beneficiaries formed 
 trusts, created monopolies, and wound up by issuing hundreds of 
 
 83 
 
millions of stock without adding a dollar to the actual value of the 
 plants. 
 
 "By the judicious use of a small percentage of this special 
 privilege tax, the 'protective' tariff beneficiaries have been success- 
 ful, up to date, in keeping congress in a 'stand-pat' attitude, and a 
 special taxation of all the people for the benefit of the few still goes 
 industriously and merrily on. 
 
 "There is no more bitter sarcasm nor mocking humor than the 
 tariff beneficiaries' plea that the 'protective' tariff is for the benefit 
 and protection of the American workingman. It is true that the 
 American workingman has wrested from employers higher wages 
 than ever before; but this is through the efforts and the sacrifices 
 of organized labor. It is true that he is better fed, better clothed, 
 and better housed than those of his own class in other countries; 
 but he is a much more valuable and competent workman than the 
 foreign wage laborer. 
 
 "Nevertheless the American workingman is worried, and he 
 has been led to do some thinking and investigating; first, because 
 14,000,000 girls and women in the. United States find it necessary 
 to labor; second, because his share of 'unprecedented prosperity' 
 does not abide with him, but is taken from him by the greatly in- 
 creased cost of living — the tariff — protected trusts being the largest 
 beneficiaries of this increased cost. 
 
 "He sees that there are two distinct classes of citizens — the 
 producing class and the exploiting class. He sees the shining 
 lights of 'high finance,' of stock watering, of public franchise hucks- 
 tering, of special privilege, and of graft of all kinds and degrees, 
 lined up in the front ranks of the exploiting class — the class that 
 has added nothing to the nation's happiness or to its material wel- 
 fare, but that has debauched private and public morals at home and 
 has disgraced the nation abroad. 
 
 "He sees the stock jugglers, the stock-waterers, the trust mag- 
 nates, the tariff-tax beneficiaries, the special privilege recipients, 
 parading their evidence of unlimited wealth. He sees them con- 
 tributing with princely liberality to churches, to libraries, to col- 
 leges — to popularize and to perpetuate the present system of pro- 
 tective tariff, trusts, and 'high finance.' He sees them with their 
 villas and their castles at home and abroad, their public post-offices 
 within their private grounds, their private cars, their yachts, their 
 banks, their railroads, their newspapers, their lobbies in and out of 
 the legislatures and congress. He sees them on intimate terms with 
 law-makers and federal judges, even hobnobbing with royalty. He 
 
 84 
 
sees all this, and he feels that he pays a large part of the toll, very 
 much against his will. 
 
 "He is not envious of the so-called plutocrats because they 
 have 'lots of money;' but he is convinced that lots of their money 
 is other people's money, for which they gave no value and to which 
 they have no moral right. 
 
 "He has learned that if he steals $50.00 he goes to the peniten- 
 tiary; but that the man who steals millions is admitted into 'high 
 finance' and is heralded as a foremost American. He has found that 
 if he violates the injunction of a court he goes to jail, and his home 
 is sold to pay the court's cost; but what when the corporation 
 magnate violates an injunction, he gives bond and goes free. 
 
 "He has learned that when a corporation is the complainant, 
 federal judges are not only prompt to assume jurisdiction, but only 
 too often they assume also the spirit of the prosecutor. He sees the 
 leading business men of the country placing pride of pelf above 
 pride of self. He sees them proclaiming and exemplifying the 
 heresy that the dollar is the standard of success, and that this suc- 
 cess is the standard of character, of worth. 
 
 "He hears himself patronizingly asked to accept 'a full dinner 
 pail' in lieu of a full share of civic rights and full opportunities in 
 life. He has discovered that the devotees of 'high finance' have two 
 systems of arithmetic. When they buy they estimate the cost of 
 labor, material and machinery, by the formula of 2 and 2 make 4; 
 but when they capitalize to sell stocks and bonds, it is 2 and 2 
 make 22. 
 
 "He is told by the railroads that the rails made and sold by the 
 steel trust at exorbitant, protective tariff prices, are defective, and 
 are continually breaking, thus causing railroad wrecks, and daily 
 and hourly endangering the lives of thousands of people ; and he is 
 told by the railroads that the tariff-protected steel trust monopoly 
 turns out these defective rails so as to save money — the money going 
 to pay dividends on hundreds of millions of watered stock. But no 
 one in authority has ever suggested that the steel trust rail-makers 
 are criminally responsible. 
 
 "The government itself tells him the railroads, congressmen, 
 senators, and men of large wealth have conspired to defraud the 
 people of thousands of acres of valuable mining and timber lands, 
 but he sees one of these very senators at the head of the prosecution 
 of the mine union leaders of Colorado. 
 
 "He sees corporation lawyers appointed to federal judgeships. 
 He sees cabinet officers go direct from the administration to become 
 intimately associated with Wall Street leaders of 'high finance.' 
 
 85 
 
"He has been given ample evidence that even the United States 
 Senate, the highest law-making body of the nation — and the body 
 that confirms the appointments of all federal judges — is controlled, 
 when necessary, by senators elected to represent railroad trusts, 
 tariff-beneficiaries, and other special privilege recipients." 
 
 There might be an interminable number of strikes reported as 
 they occur from day to day, and are in full blast now as I write, as 
 well as other articles and writings similar to this very forcible one 
 from Mr. L. F. Post, all of which make a continuous flow of testi- 
 mony to substantiate and fortify the facts, sentiments and views set 
 forth in this Dead Issue, as well as the Live one. But as to the 
 strikes I will insert only one more, and that of a very unique kind, as 
 it is simply a strike up side down and "tuther end" foremost, as 
 follows : 
 
 "LOCK-OUT of 130,000 Cotton Spinners Declared by Federa- 
 tion of Masters at Manchester, England. 700 Mills are Closed. 
 Manchester, England, Oct. 1. — The Federation of Master Cotton 
 Spinners to-day declared a lock-out of one hundred and thirty 
 thousand operatives and closed the doors of seven hundred mills 
 owned by its members." 
 
 We see that this strike was declared by a Federation of Masters 
 at Manchester, England, and shut down on 130,000 laborers; and 
 now what does this little press dispatch of less than ten lines mean? 
 There might be a column written from this text. It tells how many 
 laborers, but how many women and children were involved will 
 never be known except to Infinite Wisdom, whose recording angel 
 has every one recorded and the hairs of each head are all numbered 
 and known unto Him. 
 
 Can we interpret what this "LOCK-OUT" says? Only in part; 
 but this much we know — it means if you refuse to do what we say 
 and submit to the terms we propose we will starve and freeze you 
 and all of your family who cannot get somewhere away from us to 
 eak out your existence. And who are these human beings who are 
 so oppressed? Were they brought from the jungles of Africa, and 
 from their degradation, ignorance and filth, with no clothing to hide 
 their nakedness save a breech-clout, or perhaps only a string of 
 beads? Oh, no; not one of those. They were all sold for gold to 
 the Southern States of America, and after they had been brought up 
 by God's Divine plan, from the lowest human degradation to a full 
 equality and level with those whom they now heartlessly oppress, 
 it became a political necessity with England that these Southern 
 slaves whom they had sold for gold should be freed ; and freed from 
 what? From a God-given protection and tutilage which had 
 
 86 
 
brought them up from the "lowest down" and made them the most 
 efBcient, satisfactory, and best contented system of labor that the 
 world ever possessed (because it was a God-devised system) to be 
 turned loose in the world and compelled to compete with their serfs 
 or perish. 
 
 But who are these "serfs" that are "LOCKED OUT"? Not one 
 of them, to the remotest generation, has descended from the heathen 
 from whom by Divine command we were commanded to "get ye 
 your slaves." But your own kith and kin, whom God has said, 
 "Thou shalt not enslave," much less hold in Satanic serfdom, or 
 even "oppress the hireling in his wages." 
 
 In the February number of "Everybody's Magazine" there is 
 an article of nearly ten pages written by Mr. Frederic Townsend 
 Martin, of whom the editor says as a preface to the article: "An 
 American citizen of the world — New York — London — Paris — the 
 host of royalty, peerage and aristocracy." Mr. Martin speaks from 
 intimate personal knowledge of the "rich." 
 
 And I can safely add that he is giving all of this very valuable 
 testimony in favor of my case entirely unawares, and with no 
 knowledge of my case and the application of his statements to it. 
 His evidence can certainly be taken at its full par value. His theme 
 is the "Passing of the Idle Rich" in the February, March and April 
 numbers of this valuable magazine, and the articles are not only 
 very entertaining but intensely interesting, while they furnish food 
 for serious thought and meditation. While all the articles furnish 
 indirect testimony, more or less, emphatically in favor of my case, 
 I only quote a paragraph here and there as extracts from these 
 articles which furnish direct and convincing testimony in support of 
 what I have written, and have to write of this Live Issue as well as 
 the Dead Issue. 
 
 "Forty years ago, as a boy, I lived in a true American home. 
 The atmosphere of that home was still under the vitalizing in- 
 fluence of the nation's great struggle for emancipation. Lincoln 
 was a saint. We were provincial, to be sure, but there was bliss 
 in simplicity and innocence. Morally and intellectually, the life of 
 the family and the life of the state were settled. We knew there 
 was a God. We were positive as to just what was right and what 
 was wrong. The Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the Con- 
 stitution of the United States, the fact of the assured greatness of 
 our country, the power of our religious, political and social ideals 
 to save the world — our faith in these was our Rock of Ages. 
 
 "Just how far these fundamentals are now broken and scattered 
 I shall not here attempt to say. But it is simply true that the Bible 
 
 87 
 
is no longer read, that religion has lost its hold, that the constitu- 
 tion and laws are trampled upon by the rich and powerful, and are 
 no longer held sacred by the poor and weak. Less than half a 
 century ago the aristocracy of America worked with its hands, 
 labored in its broad fields, ate its bread in the sweat of its brow. 
 The cities were small and inconsequential, and the laws of hospi- 
 tality far over-balanced the traditions of class. Here and there was 
 wealth — but wealth was shackled to the wheels of opportunity." 
 
 If this testimony had been made to order it could not have been 
 stronger proof of what has been written in the Dead Issue. Lincoln, 
 a saint ! ! The man who inflicted more damage on the negro race 
 than any other one man that ever lived, and at the same time ob- 
 literated the last barrier left to hinder this interminable strife be- 
 tween capital and labor. The Bible never read ! ! Its commands, 
 its precepts, its admonitions, all ignored; the only real chart or 
 compass for any nation or people thrown overboard and with Satan 
 as Commander-in-Chief and Captain of the ship and crew, set sail on 
 the tempestuous sea of future time. Where, oh, Vvhere, will we cast 
 anchor ! God, in His Infinite Wisdom, knows ! But here is more 
 testimony from* the same source and of the same kind : 
 
 "I confess the terrific sweep of industrialism (greed) across this 
 land throughout the past half century appals me as I study it from 
 records written and unwritten. I cannot go down through the 
 crowded tenement sections of our great cities without having it 
 borne in upon me that we, as a nation, pay a fearful price in human 
 blood and tears for our industrial triumphs. I cannot see the 
 poverty, even the degradation, of the wives and children of the 
 wage-working class in many cities, without being visited by the 
 devastating thought that surely, if the principle of the thing be 
 necessary and right, there must be fearful errors somewhere in the 
 application of the principle. 
 
 "For the grim fact stands out beyond denial that the men who 
 are the workers of the nation, and the women and the children de- 
 pendent upon them, are not to-day given the opportunities that are 
 their proper birthright in free America; and that, struggle as they 
 Avill, save as they may, lift their voices in protest as they dare, they 
 cannot obtain from our industrial hierarchy much more than a mere 
 living wage. And on the other hand, it is equally true that the wage 
 of capital is high, that the class of the idle rich has grown out 
 of all proportion, and that it has taken upon itself a power and an 
 arrogance unsurpassed in the industrial history of the world." 
 
 He says, "I confess;" is this not States' evidence from an eye 
 witness, "I cannot go down through the crowded tenement sections 
 
 88 
 
of our great cities without being convinced that we pay a fearful 
 price in human blood and tears for our industrial triumphs." And 
 then he confesses that "He sees the poverty, even the degradation 
 of the wives and children of the wage-working class." And these 
 are of your own kind and color, ground down as miserable serfs by 
 heartless greed, the excessive "love of money — the root of all evil," 
 which God in His wisdom had made a shield and protection for the 
 most degraded, miserable and "lowest down" humanity, while being 
 brought up from degradation in God's appointed way to civiliza- 
 tion and to make the best class of labor; and v/hile the most effi- 
 cient was the most contented and satisfied labor in this world — well 
 clothed, well fed, well protected and well cared for because they 
 were the owner's money, and his "love of money" was a protection 
 and a comfort. But now the Bible is a closed book, and Satan is 
 Commander-in-chief, and he has reversed the program, and any and 
 all who are overtaken by adversity of every class and kind, even of 
 your own color and kind, are to be ground down and totally de- 
 stroyed by the idolatrous worshippers of the "Almighty Dollar." 
 Where are we drifting; without chart or compass? There is a stiff 
 gale, with the entire horizon dark and ominous ; mutterings from the 
 North, the East and the West, with scarcely a lighter hue from the 
 South. There are unmistakable mutterings and tokens of a rapidly 
 approaching hurricane, with frequent flashes of lightning from the 
 East and North and West, New York is partially paralyzed. Ohio 
 is not a whit better, and Chicago and all of Illinois in much the 
 same condition, v/ith an offer in California of $100,000 reward for 
 miscreants who undertook to "fight the devil with fire" and dyna- 
 mite. W^here are we drifting? But let us go back and get a little 
 more testimony from our witness. Here it is : 
 
 "We can no longer blind ourselves with idle phrases nor drug 
 our consciences with the outworn boast that the workingman of 
 America is to-day the hig'hest paid artisan in the world. We know 
 those lying figures well. Many a time I myself, in personal argu- 
 ment, have shown that the American workman receives from one 
 and a half to three times as much as his English cousin at the same 
 trade ; but Vv^e know now that this means nothing. We are learning, 
 instead of envying the American workingman his lot, to pity more 
 deeply that English cousin. We are learning, too, that what we 
 give our workers in wages we take back from them in the high: • 
 cost of necessities, in food, in clothing, in medicine, in insurance, 
 in a hundred devious ways all with one tendency — to keep the liv- 
 ing margin down." 
 
 89 
 
And then here is something more specific from the same source 
 which is full as strong testimony. 
 
 In the census of 1900, it is shown clearly that the average em- 
 ployee in this country produces every year $1200 of wealth, after 
 full allowance for the cost of the material he works with and all 
 possible running expenses that are paid by his employer. Out of 
 this amount of wealth he gets $437. The remainder, $843, goes in- 
 to the hands of other men — the capitalist, or the exploiter of labor. 
 
 That money, nearly two-thirds of the wealth produced by the 
 men who labor with their hands and heads, goes to pay interests 
 and dividends on the securities that represent the increment gather- 
 ed by those who sold out, in other days, or who capitalized their 
 plants and settled down to draw their sustenance from the labor of 
 other men. Hence the idle rich. 
 
 Turn back to the industrial history of the second half of the 
 nineteenth century, and you can trace this development in the very 
 statistics of industry. For the idle rich are but the outcome of our 
 industrial evolution; and the same mighty forces that gave us a 
 golden age of American prosperity gave us also the Idle Rich and 
 the Serfs of Industry. 
 
 Yes, by Satan's process which impels the "mighty forces" and 
 continually makes the rich man richer and the poor man poorer. 
 How long can any sane person hope that this process will con- 
 tinue to grind down the unfortunate civilized and christianized of 
 God's heritage to a condition of degradation no better than that from 
 which the negro was brought by God's infinitely wise and merci- 
 ful providence from his African jungles. It requires no prophet 
 to foretell the speedy result of these "mighty forces" in a conflict 
 of indescribable horror. Imagine, if possible, an internal struggle 
 with every city divided against itself — with the balloon or flying- 
 machine as much in the possession of the labor party as the million- 
 aire, and every millionaire's castle a special target for bombs and 
 combustibles ; 1000 feet, or more, up in the air by night and by day. 
 Oh ! horror of horrors ! And if you turn to Europe or any other 
 country in the world you find no asylum where you can find a haven 
 of rest. 
 
 The struggle between capital and labor is probably more ad- 
 vanced and bitter in France than in any other country, with Britain 
 and Germany, in fact all of Europe, in little if any better condi- 
 tion than our own country. Let's turn this horrid picture's face to 
 the wall, and pray that God in His infinite mercy and His Almighty 
 power may avert this world's most dreadful calamity. 
 
 90 
 
But is this the Armageddon of which much has been written and 
 many predictions made? I do not know, but of this I am quite 
 certain that since the Divine plan of elevating the "furtherest down" 
 grade of ignorant and heathenish humanity to the most satisfactory 
 and contented class of labor has been thwarted by Satan's strategy. 
 There never can be a permanent settlement made between capital 
 and labor so long as "the love of money is the root of all evil," as see 
 Rev. 12 : 12 — "Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea foi; 
 the devil is come down unto you having great wrath because he 
 knoweth that he hath but a short time." Mr. Carnegie has donated 
 millions as a peace fund to prevent nations from going to war, and 
 he may achieve some success in that undertaking, but this — is to my 
 mind a vastly more intricate and dreadful problem, and does not 
 appear to have disturbed his mind. But if I see correctly he could 
 spend the last dollar of his millions with his most earnest efforts to 
 avert and put a quietus on this struggle between capital and labor 
 and he would utterly fail because "the daughter of the horse 
 leaches," incasible greed can never be quenched, and if he could 
 make a bargain with the devil and pay him his price his majesty 
 would not comply with his contract. 
 
 There are many thousands of men and families working as day 
 laborers in this country, who, but for the abolition of slavery would 
 have owned homes and farms and slaves. Does any sane person 
 believe that this class of human beings can be made into serfs with- 
 out a bloody struggle. They will need be exterminated. They 
 cannot be subjugated to serfdom. The persistent efforts of the 
 "money-power" has a constant tendency to oppression of labor, and 
 there is just as determined resistance on the part of labor to op- 
 pression with a constant yearning and longing for amelioration 
 on the part of labor, and with these two opposing elements con- 
 stantly and energetically at work. 
 
 There is a steady and continual combination and concentration 
 of capital, which grows more and yet more powerful, and more 
 thoroughly unified, until its power when brought to bear on any- 
 thing of sufficient importance to arouse its interest, becomes over- 
 Whelming and almost irresistible. And this "money-power," des- 
 pite all efforts to prevent, will very soon get control of any party or 
 administration which may have charge of our government, and 
 when they have this control it is quite an easy matter to manipulate 
 all matters of government, as well as commercial and business 
 affairs, to make the country prosperous by making the rich man 
 richer and the poor man poorer. 
 
 91 
 
Meantime there is a constantly increasing and rapidly, grow- 
 ing combination of labor which as yet has not been sufficiently or- 
 ganized and augmented to make its real power practically avail- 
 able. But it is plainly to be seen that it is only a question of a 
 very short time when this combination of labor will be thoroughly 
 organized so that all of its power can be made as available as that 
 of capital; then the labor combination will be by great odds more 
 powerful and overwhelming — What then? There is abundance of 
 convincing evidence accumulating from day to day, and given in 
 the papers, to satisfy any discerning mind that it is scarcely possi- 
 ble to exaggerate the seriousness of the "Labor Problem." Hobson 
 mirates over the yellow peril. But that is thousands of miles away 
 while this "Labor Problem" is at our door in every city and in 
 every land and in every civilized nation on this earth, and perhaps 
 as critical in the United States as in any other country, because 
 the labor is, as a rule, better educated here than elsewhere ; and then 
 besides the labor has a bettr opportunity to participate in the affairs 
 of Government here than elsewhere and is already and becoming 
 more and more a political factor, and v/ill very soon become suffi- 
 ciently strong and well-organized to contest successfully with the 
 "money-pov/er" for government control, and then which horn of 
 the dilemna shall we take. The inevitable tendency of the "money- 
 power" is to an abominable, insufferable oligarchy while the ten- 
 dency of the labor union is just as strong and inevitable to socialism 
 or communism and the legitim.ate fruit is anarchy. 
 
 If there is need for more testimony to prove what we state there 
 is no lack of it in the daily records of strikes throughout the coun- 
 try, and continual strife and struggle betvv'een capital and labor. 
 
 The third and last series of Mr. Martin's articles comprising 
 about ten pages, commencing with chapter II, is a continuation of 
 just as valuable testimony and corroboration of what I have Vv^ritten 
 and have to write as what has been already quoted, but I will refer 
 to only a few more of the most impressive statements. He speaks 
 of charity and reform as follows : 
 
 "It may be that as it spreads and grows and brings into the 
 battle thousands upon thousands of devoted men and women, hun- 
 dreds of millions of dollars of hoarded wealth, social reform upon 
 social reform, it will act as a check and an offset to the tremendous 
 industrial discontent that is spreading over the country. In so far 
 as it is a sign that the wealthy men and women of society are really 
 throwing their hearts and minds into the mighty problem of adjust- 
 ing the relationship between the classes which are so rapidly drift- 
 ing apart, it is hopeful. 
 
 92 
 
"Yes I am obliged to admit that in the majority of cases with 
 which I come personally in contact; the charity of my class is at 
 present one of two things : it is either simply a fad with little 
 genuine spirit of helpfulness behind it; or else it is, as it were, a sop 
 to fear. A good many people seem to think that it is up to the rich 
 to distribute largess to the poor, whether the poor want it or net. 
 They ignore the economics of the matter, if indeed they know 
 them. They have come to be afraid of the growing pressure from 
 below, and they think that by indiscriminate charity they can 
 lessen it. So they give ships of corn to the mass. You remem- 
 ber, perhaps, that in the later plutocracy of Rome, after the triumph 
 of Sulla, it came to be a regular habit, when frenzied mobs of 
 Romans, or would-be Romans, threatened death and ruin to the plu- 
 tocrats, for various and sundry men to buy shiploads of corn in 
 Egypt and distribute them gratis to the Roman plebs. It is true 
 that in all human probability the plutocracy of Rome prolonged its 
 life for more than half a century by just such means. If a mob of 
 slaves is hungry, and you give them something to eat, they will go 
 home and eat it ; and in the meantime, if you happen to be a Roman 
 Senator with plenty of money, your hired thugs may be able to find 
 the leaders of the delayed revolution and put them beyond any pos- 
 sibility of raising further trouble. 
 
 "You forget, when you try the process in America, that the plebs 
 of America are not slaves, and that their leaders, of whom there is 
 a host, are pretty nearly as well educated, are certainly as shrewd 
 and probably as strong, legally, as you are. In Rome the masses 
 were a race of parasites who could be fed or crushed as the occas- 
 ion demanded. In America, on the contrary, the masses are the 
 producing elements of the nation, and you are the parasites. Be- 
 tween the cry of the Roman multitude for coin and the demand of 
 the working American for wages there is a difference of intensity 
 and seriousness as great as that between the humming of a mos- 
 B quito and the thunder of an earthquake. 
 
 "High society is becoming a rampant reformer. It will reform 
 anything on a moment's notice. It is perfectly amazing, this plague 
 of reform, in its variety, in its volume, and in the intensity of earn- 
 estness with which it is pushed. 
 
 "It is the same old story. There are too many among the idle 
 rich who jump at the first obvious conclusion. They see the strange 
 phenomenon that I have noted as arising out of our industrial evo- 
 lution, and they say to themselves: 'The nation, indeed, faces 
 a crisis. We are in danger of falling. The world should continue 
 as it is. It is pleasant to be booted, spurred, and in the saddle. No 
 
 93 
 
oats for the horse, and we shall be thrown down. The mob must 
 be appeased. Feed the hungry and we shall be saved. Cure so- 
 ciety of its most evident disorders and the public mind will forget 
 the rest.' 
 
 "I challenge any gentleman to instance a single case in history 
 where petty reforms and petty charities thrown indiscriminately 
 to the mob have ever established any permanent betterment of 
 social conditions, or failed to be followed in the end by a terrific 
 reckoning. 
 
 "It is true that among the wealthy, many men to-day are honest- 
 ly advocating and honestly working for real deep-planted, perma- 
 nent reform." 
 
 It is astounding to read a paragraph like the following, signed 
 with the name of Andrew Carnegie : 
 
 "Whatever the future may have in store for Labor, the evolu- 
 tionist, who sees nothing but certain and steady progress for the 
 race, will never attempt to set bounds to its triumph, even to its 
 final form of complete and universal industrial cooperation, which 
 I hope is some day to be reached." (Socialism.) 
 
 By industrial cooperation Mr. Carnegie explains that he means 
 the slow process of selling or giving actual ov/nership of manufac- 
 turing industries to the workmen. He claims that he began this 
 experiment in this country when the Carnegie Steel Company took 
 in, from time to time, forty-odd young partners, none of whom con- 
 tributed a penny of money, the company taking their note payable 
 only out of profits. 
 
 A dozen other instances could be adduced, beginning with the 
 United States Steel Cooperation itself, the giant among the trusts. 
 There is no doubt whatever that this reform is spreading." "What 
 is more, I believe it is an honest reform, and that most of the men 
 who have introduced it into their companies have dohe so from an 
 honest belief that it would elevate the workingman and solve in each 
 separate instance the most dangerous of the industrial problems 
 that confront us. 
 
 In my own mind, knowing the habits of a plutocracy, I cannot 
 help doubting whether widespread cooperation between wage 
 workers and capital, particularly between the lower orders of the 
 wage-workers and the larger masters of capital, would not simply 
 afford to dishonest, disreputable, or unprincipled captains of indus- 
 try a fuller opportunity than they now enjoy to hold down the wages 
 and profits of wage-workers. 
 
 'Wealthy society in America, as everywhere else, is pursued 
 by a demon of futility. It does not matter what we do, 
 
 94 
 
whether we work like other men and women, whether we play like 
 normal men, whether we study, whether we idle, whether 
 we spend our money on charity and reforms, or throw it away in 
 the pursuit of pleasure, whether we study hard and seriously or 
 merely regale our minds and appetites with frivolous novels and 
 salacious plays — nothing seems real, nothing seems earnest, nothing 
 has any result. Too often our lives are empty of anything perma- 
 nent, anything honest, anything simple and human. But of all the 
 futile things in the world none is more futile than wealth itself. 
 Eliminate the necessity for struggle and you remove from money 
 all its true value. It becomes either dross, to be thrown away for 
 other things better worth while ; or it becomes an idol, a god, the 
 very sum and substance of the world's desire. Yes, and it has its 
 idolatrous worshippers by the thousands who manifest as much 
 fiendish earnestness and zeal as did Jezebel when she was with- 
 standing the best efforts of Elijah in favor of her Astaroth, and they 
 are certain to meet her fate if they continue to follow her example. 
 This is "old-fashioned religion," which he saj'^s is dead v/ith the 
 closed Bible as follows : 
 
 "The old-fashioned religion is dead among us, and so one great 
 protector of the home is passed and gone. I am not going to dwell 
 upon this theme, for it is a beastly thing. I have only mentioned it 
 because it is a logical climax to this chapter on futility ; and I regard 
 futility as the real nemesis of society. It turns our lives to nothing ; 
 it makes of our fairest garden a desert; it robs us in our very cradles, 
 of our lives, our liberties, and our happiness. It leaves us groping 
 about in a world of shadows, longing for the substance, dreaming 
 of realities we never can know, wishing always for change, sighing 
 always for worlds that are out of our reach." 
 
 Of all the grim jokes that ever were perpetrated, the grimmest 
 of all, in my estimation, is the time-honored coupling of the words 
 wealth and happiness in the formal blessing of a new-made bride. 
 
 We have come to the end of the story. The days of the idle 
 rich in America are as a tale that is told. To-morrow in this land 
 there will be one of two things — either an evolution or a revolution. 
 Either by one of those characteristically swift and marvelous 
 changes for which the history of our race is noted, the class which 
 I represent will again be merged into and assimilated by the body 
 of the nation, as it was half a century ago, or we shall stand face to 
 face with the forces of anarchy, socialism, trade-unionism, and a 
 hundred other cults that either do represent or claim to represent 
 the spirit of this mighty people; and we shall reenact in this land 
 some of the most terrible tragedies of history. 
 
 95 
 
I do not believe a middle course is possible. I know, of course, 
 that the rank and file of the class I represent is blind and careless. 
 I know that many of them, if they read these articles, will lay them 
 aside with a smile, calling them hysterical and untrue. Yet I am 
 bound to say the things I think, and I can only trust that some few 
 at least will be impelled to study facts. 
 
 For the poison of gold, if it has debauched and corrupted 
 American Society, if it has brought within our gates new armies of 
 parasites, if it has led to a degree of ostentation and of luxury, and 
 even of vice and profligacy, comparable with that of the Roman 
 Empire under Heliogabalus, has also spread throughout the nation. 
 I said in a former chapter that the middle class in America has al- 
 most, if not quite, lost its power. One of the most vital reasons 
 for that fact is that much of that middle class has become confused 
 with the lower fringes of the wealthy class; has learned to ape its 
 habits and luxuries ; has come to live with ostentation and display ; 
 and has given up its traditional habits of frugality and thrift. 
 
 And hear what a "tremendous" compliment he pays to cur be- 
 loved Southland — unawares, and that makes it all the greater — when 
 he says almost in so many words that there "still remains in the 
 South 7000, yes 70 times 7000, who have never yet bowed the knee 
 to Baal, nor to his Ashtaroth either, — the almighty dollar, but still 
 cling to the 'old-fashioned religion' with their open Bible, and 
 ascribe glory and majesty and dominion and power, to the only 
 living and true God 'without beginning of days or ending of years' 
 — the same yesterday, to-day and forever; whose Bible is of as much 
 import now as it was in the days of Abraham, with whom He made 
 His covenant, and on to its last inspired writer." But hear Him again 
 "Then what are we going to do about it? I wish I could answer 
 the question in one great sweeping generality. Unfortunately, I do 
 not believe it can be answered so. I know that the author of 'The 
 Trust: Its Book' has found an answer in a Utopian partnership 
 between capital and labor. I know that Mr. Carnegie has found the 
 answer in cooperation. I know that such skillful writers as Lloyd 
 and Wells have solved the riddle by Socialism. I know that many 
 thousands of the hardest-thinking, hardest-working citizens of this 
 country are pledged already to the doctrine of government owner- 
 ship of the sources of wealth. 
 
 "I know that Danton and Robespierre thought that they had 
 found it when they sat up the guillotine in Paris. I know that the 
 terrorists of Russia have worked out their own solution. I know 
 that the Rockefeller Foundation, the Sage Foundation, and a thous- 
 and other mighty charities, are intended as an answer. I know 
 
 96 
 
that Samuel Gompers and John Mitchell think that the extension 
 of trade-unionism will solve it. Above all, I know that many of the 
 seasoned leaders of the social world believe that it will swiftly solve 
 itself. 
 
 "Yet I cannot believe that any one of these solutions is the right 
 one. No permanent change in the social structure of this nation 
 can be accomplished except by a revolution or by the process of 
 evolution at which I have vaguely hinted here and there throughout 
 this series." 
 
 What stronger and more irrefutable testimoney can be needed 
 than this of what I h?.d written before this was written — that we are 
 on a stormy sea without chart or compass, with Satan chief in com- 
 mand, with bedlam, and confusion reigning supreme, with thousands 
 of remedies presxribed, any one of which will but make confusion 
 more confounded. But hear cur excellent witness again as follows : 
 
 "I cannot help but hope, even against the evidence of my own 
 ears and eyes, that this plutocracy which to-day threatens the very 
 life of the nation, can be passed into American history without an 
 epoch-marking revolution. Only, we of the wealthy class have 
 many things to learn, and we must learn them faithfully, sitting at 
 the feet of the historians. 
 
 "I do not believe that the march of progress in this land is to 
 be turned backward. 
 
 "I take for granted that the wiping out of the idle rich is to be 
 one of the first steps in a program of national advancement, greater, 
 more splendid, and far more universal than any other period of 
 advancement and progress in the history of the nation. The idle 
 rich are an obstacle in the way, therefore they must be eliminated 
 or destroyed. Whether we — all the rich, as a class — are to share 
 with them in that destruction depends upon whether or not we, too, 
 set ourselves up as an obstacle in the path of the nation's develop- 
 ment. 
 
 "As I have said, I can not name a panacea, nor dispose in a few 
 rounded paragraphs of the problems that confront us. Personally, 
 I am convinced that many measures to which my class is to-day 
 unalterably opposed will within the next few years take their places 
 as laws upon our statute-books. 
 
 "I do not expect to see a general triumph of pure Socialism. It 
 may be that ultimately we shall experiment with government owner- 
 ship of railroads and public utilities, but I should look forward with 
 terror to any such experiment. It may be that in the remedying of 
 the defects of our civilization we as a nation shall be impelled into 
 excess of this sort for at least a brief period." 
 
 97 
 
He takes it for granted that the idle rich are to be wiped out. 
 If it will serve as a panacea I can tell him in all candor, and ser- 
 iousness as well as sadness that it is my candid opinion that in a 
 very short time there will be no idle rich — not one — because they 
 will all get busy, very busy, trying to take care of their wealth, and 
 find a haven of safety and rest. Does he not admit, and do we not 
 all know that for the last forty years the pendulum has been stead- 
 ily and continuously swinging on and on to make the rich man 
 richer and the poor man poorer until now nine-tenths of the people 
 feel a discontent and unrest caused by this oppression, and a large 
 majority of these, comprising all the laboring class and the entire 
 producing class of our country, and in fact of the civilized world, 
 more or less ground down and oppressed by an Oligarchy of un 
 scrupulous and tyrannical wealth until the pendulum has at last 
 reached the limit of its arch in that direction with the oppressed 
 millions in a rage and frenzy of wrath. 
 
 Does any one hope that the wisdom and power of man can con- 
 struct a barrier that can stop the pendulum at the central point 
 of justice, equity, and righteousness, with Satan in command? If 
 that could be done by human power the concussion might jar this 
 old world out of its orbit. It will never be done save by the same 
 Almighty power and wisdom that adjusted capital and labor aright 
 at the first. 
 
 I do not propose to try to grasp this subject which I call the 
 "Live Issue" in all its length and breadth, because I realize that it 
 is almost an inexaustible theme, and if I can bring it with sufficient 
 prominence before the public to have it receive the serious thought 
 and consideration which its vital and imperative purport demands 
 and thus secure for it the combined and most serious and earnest 
 statesmanship and wisdom of this world, I will have fully satisfied 
 my fondest hope. 
 
 When we realize that all of the Governments with the mighty 
 powers and controlling. influences of this world are working with 
 a closed Bible, and with a deaf ear to all of its statutes, admoni- 
 tions and warnings, you can look back through history, sacred and 
 profane, from the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, on through 
 the ages to the present time and find that the same fate has befallen 
 every nation that has turned away from and disregarded the laws of 
 the Supreme Ruler of Nations. 
 
 King Solomon is referred to as the Wise man in Holy writ as 
 well as by the world at large, and he was no doubt one of the great- 
 est potentates in the world's history, either ancient or modern; and 
 so long as he was guided and controlled by Moses and the Prophets, 
 
 98 
 
and by Divine inspiration he had a peaceful, prosperous and glor- 
 ious reign. But when he departed from this way he at once brought 
 adversity and misery not only upon himself and his nation, but on 
 his posterity. The great world power of the Roman Empire dis- 
 integrated, dissolved and vanished during the "dark ages" from no 
 more utter disregard for God's laws and admonitions than now 
 prevail. But in that day the use of steam power, electricity, tele- 
 phones, and flying machines were unknown, and the developments 
 and results which required a half centurj^ or more for accomplish- 
 ment then will now require only a few years. 
 
 We see from the papers that an aviator flew from London, Eng- 
 land to Paris, France, 250 miles at a speed of about one mile per 
 minute. When the Roman empire was in its zenith this journey 
 would have required five or eight days, perhaps longer, which was 
 performed in about two hours; and this world and all of its affairs 
 now progresses at about this increased rate of speed. 
 
 Without going into details as to the condition of England, 
 France, Russia or Germany, or any other civilized nation, we can 
 say without fear of contradiction, that none are in better condition 
 as to this strife between capital and labor than the United States; 
 but in all of these, the struggle is continually growing more bitter 
 and determined. 
 
 The German government is perhaps at this time the strongest 
 and most firmly founded power in Europe. Its foundations were 
 laid deep and strong, centuries ago, cemented with blood and iron, 
 and knit firmly together for strength and durability ; but if you will 
 place your ear to the ground, even there you will hear the deep dull 
 rumblings which betoken and give unmistakable evidences of a 
 political earthquake, which, when it does come, will be sufficiently 
 furious to destroy "Divine Right" along with the money power. 
 
 But to return to our own country, in the affairs of which we are 
 more deeply and vitally interested. 
 
 In a speech made before the Indiana Legislature, Samuel Gom- 
 pers. President of the American Federation of Labor, declared that, 
 "A constructive, progressive, radical labor party must soon enter the 
 field of politics against the republican and democratic parties." 
 
 Then to Mr. Bryan's paper, "The Commoner," we are indebted 
 for the following: j 
 
 99 
 
THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM GIVES EDITORS A CHILL 
 
 Mark This Socialism Movement and Mark it Carefully, Because 
 it is a Force That Cannot be Ignored. 
 
 Must be Viewed With Alarm. 
 
 SOCIALISM WILL CONTROL IN FUTURE. 
 
 How the Secret Agents of Socialism are Permanenting the 
 Old Parties. 
 
 What Shall We do to be Saved? 
 
 The sudden and enormous growth in the Socialists' vote sent a 
 chill through the editorial rooms of the country. Men of money 
 are also greatly alarmed lest they find it necessary to cope with this 
 'new force' at an early day. 
 
 This widespread alarm is well founded, but the blow these 
 gentlemen so greatly fear cannot be avoided by attacking socialism 
 or socialists. The remedy is in the application of democratic re- 
 forms honestly applied. 
 
 Nothing would so increase the Socialists' vote and transform 
 the vote into the strongest force that has ever moved against the 
 entrenched forces of special privilege as for the democratic party to 
 surrender itself to the representatives of plutocracy. 
 
 A COLORADO CHILL. 
 
 Two years ago the Socialists received the following votes in five 
 out of the fifteen instances where they had filed tickets : 
 
 California, 28,000; Connecticut, 5,133; Indiana, 13,476; New 
 York, 33,994; Ohio, 33,759; Wisconsin, 28,144. 
 
 That vote was recorded in a presidential year when every avail- 
 able convert to the new scheme of political and industrial salvation 
 was brought to the polls. 
 
 Last week the Socialist vote in those same sections reached the 
 following totals: 
 
 California, 60,000; Connecticut, 12,000; Indiana, 20,000; New 
 York, 68,000; Ohio, 50,000; Wisconsin, 60,000. 
 
 And those figures show that in an "off" year the Socialist vote 
 had increased ar follows: 
 
 100 
 
California, 31,856; Connecticut, 6,867; Indiana, 8,524; New 
 York, 34,006; Ohio, 16,241; Wisconsin, 31,856,— which gives a total 
 increase of the SociaUst vote in these five instances only of 127,350. 
 
 And this increase is not accidental. It is the result of regular 
 methodical work. Socialism is presented to men, not in the guise 
 of "periodical platform pledges," but as a sweeping, economic phil- 
 osophy, as the solution of every kind of known industrial and politi- 
 cal problem. It is a faith ; a religion ; a working hypothesis of life ; 
 a final, curative treatment that does not waste efforts on results, but 
 goes straight to first causes. And socialism seems likely to awaken 
 us from our contemptuous indifference only when it holds the bal- 
 ance of power in congress and its mayors are the chief executives of 
 many of our cities. 
 
 And the socialist propaganda is not only working through the 
 machinery of the soap-box orators and well-considered pamphlets; 
 it has its system of what it calls "permeation," and its ingenious 
 agents are working with rare diplomacy in the councils of both the 
 "old" parties. These "permeation" agents do not call themselves 
 socialists; they make a profession of the ancient political creeds. 
 They instigate municipal undertakings that seem innocent of any 
 collectivist bearing; but they are, nevertheless, an installment of 
 collectivism. They get a "plank" put in this platform of some state 
 democracy ; and another "plank" put in that platform of some repub- 
 lican state party ; and those "planks" are lauded as sound "reforms" 
 by good party men. They have adopted this system of "permea- 
 tion" abroad with notable success; they commenced its operation 
 here just prior to Mr. Bryan's declaration in favor of National own- 
 ership of the interstate railroads. They are keen men who handle 
 this phase of the movement, educated, alert, subtle, and they are 
 laughing in their sleeves at the easy way in which politicians of the 
 old schools are "falling" for the game. They have established sev- 
 eral successful daily newspapers. They have a thoroughly organ- 
 ized system of publicity ; they are in business, not before each cam- 
 paign, but every day of the year ; and we should realize that the time 
 has arrived for us to cease from ridicule and to consider carefully 
 the breadth and meaning of this propaganda. We are not crying 
 "Wolf" where there is no wolf; we are saying, "Mark this socialist 
 movement, and mark it carefully because it is a force that cannot 
 be ignored." — Denver Times. 
 
 101 
 
A TEXAS CHILL. 
 
 The Dallas Times-Herald in summing up the results of the 
 recent elections has the following to say regarding gains made by 
 the Socialists; "Socialism is on the boom. Charles Edward Rus- 
 sell, Socialistic nominee for Governor of New York, polled more 
 than 75,000 votes. In California the heavy socialistic vote defeated 
 the State democratic ticket. Wisconsin Socialists elected a con- 
 gressman, came within 300 votes of electing another, sent thirteen 
 men to the Wisconsin legislature and captured every office in Mil- 
 waukee County. Los Angeles Socialists voted 10,000 strong. A 
 socialistic candidate for mayor in the city of Minneapolis ran neck 
 and neck with the nominees of the old parties. In Oklahoma the 
 socialists polled a heavy vote and captured one county. In 1912 the 
 socialist nominees for president will poll more than 1,000,000 votes 
 unless all signs fail. In the coming years it is a party to be reckon- 
 ed with in the United States." 
 
 Freemont did not receive as many votes as the socialist can- 
 didate did at our last election. Yet at the next election Lincoln 
 went into the presidential office. It may be that with a united de- 
 mocracy we may be blessed with another or possibly two more de- 
 mocratic administrations such as President Wilson is now giving 
 us, but sooner or later either the money-power or the socialist rad- 
 ical labor combination will get control of the government and it 
 matters little which of the two as either will bring about equal 
 disaster. The money-power appears to have a clear title to all that 
 is left of the Republican party — while the Progressive party and the 
 Democratic party will both be active bidders for the labor vote and 
 as long as this vote can be kept divided between tv/o or three par- 
 ties their influence will be limited, but when it consolidates and con- 
 trolls its full legitimate strength it will hold the balance of power 
 and will therefore be very powerful. Before President Wilson was in 
 office six months he displayed his statesmanship and ability by 
 quietly settling the most serious and dreadful strike that ever 
 threatened our country which if it had materialized with its full 
 force would have paralyzed our country from ocean to ocean with 
 more serious results than any financial panic could possibly do — 
 even if it had not brought bloodshed and Civil War. But he had 
 no sooner quieted this threatened calamity in the New England 
 States than it broke out only on a smaller scale but with violence 
 and bloodshed in Indiana with sufficient force to call forth the entire 
 force of State troops to quiet it. Our President as a highly educat- 
 ed, very talented and thoroughly equipped statesman is the equal of 
 
 102 
 
any man who ever filled this office and with excellent judgment he 
 has selected a cabinet perhaps equal to any that could be found in 
 our country, although of this class their is no scarcity. In his se- 
 lection he has as closest to him for Counceller the "Gladstone of 
 America," but with all this President Wilson nor any other man 
 can never reconcile or put a quietus upon the conflict between 
 capital and labor. IT CAN ONLY BE DONE BY THE "KING OF 
 KINGS AND JUDGE OF ALL THE EARTH," WHEN HE COMES IN 
 HIS GLORY, WHEN THE WICKED IN THEIR TERROR OF 
 FRIGHT "SHALL CALL UPON THE ROCKS AND THE MOUN- 
 TAINS TO FALL ON THEM TO HIDE THEM FROM THE RATH," 
 OF A JUST GOD. THEN, AND NOT UNTIL THEN, WILL THIS 
 ISSUE BE SETTLED. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 103 
 
7 7/V 
 
 >*^y/