The daily citizen. [volume] (Asheville, N.C.) 1889-1890, 1890-03-21
OLD MASTERS AND SLAVES,

NO one who has owned slaves in tn
Southern States can fail to recall number
less instances Of devoted self-sacritice ant
most tender affection between those pu
SO far apart in station or fortune. II
grew up between the nurse and the child
between the boy and his sable playmate
between the young man and his compan
ion in field sports, extended in this rela
ton to the field of arms. where many an
old slave or many an humble companion
followed his young master to the war
to wait on him, to nurse him, in wounds
or sickness, and to forget everything els,
except the self imposed charge of atfec.
tionate fidelity. So strong and so many
were these ties that they at once relieve
slavery from its curse; for the curse falls
on inhumanity, and inhumanity is incom-
patiblc with attached affection. And
such affection was not the unrcasoninp
implicit fondncss of the dog or the horse
It beat i'll human heart, sensible it may
be to humiliation, but warmed with II
divine tenderness tina, animated an in.
nate nobility of character. Wcremembei
reading in copy Of the Century a iic
tion, founded on realities, where an old
negro woman, once a slave, afterwardsa
prosperous free woman, came to the res
cue of king Solomon, of Kentucky"
who had fallen into degradation. and
was put on the auction block, and sold
as vagrant. She bought him, and ten
derly provided Tor him. because he had
been the playmate of her young master.
who died on his journey rom Virginia to
the new home in Kentucky, to " hich hit
parents were removing, The writer
asks: What historian of the heart will
ever be able to do justice to those pecul-
lar ties which bound the heart of the ne.
gro in years gone by to race OF no,
always worthy masters" The masters
may not have been always or altogethe,
worthy except in their relation to thos,
whose affections they won and held, but
the great number OF such invested an
otherwise harsh and dctested institution
with much more OF human amability
than always attaches t. the interchang,
oi men III the state of freedom and equal.
ity.
The Elizabeth City Economist gives
another illustration not from fiction, but
from fact, of slave who went with his
young master To California in the early |
days Of the gold fever was his compan-
ion, worked with him. prospered with |
him. and when the master died. as he did |
from ovcrwork, regardless that he was u |
free man in free country, and the lawful
successor to their Joint earnings, gat hered
up the gold which they had collected,
and returned with il to his old master in |
Georgia, and mingled his tears with theirs
ns he told over the story of the sad be.
The story of the old slave o
he father of the young man Cross. lately
put to work for a term ot years ON tn,
public road MS punishment for crime. is
still fresh. The old slave, free now for
twenty-five years, freely and urgently
offered to take upon himself the suiicrings
,i one he had loved from infancy Surely
io such vicarious sacrifice could he mad,
{ slavery had been all So hard, cruel and
'cpulsivc as pictured by those who So
and SO succeeding in over.
throwing it to give place to another
orm of slavery in which the amiabiity
md unscltishncss of negro nature no
onpcr have "A field for ploy.