A Boy's Experience in the Civil War, 1860-1865:

: "The war had a very slight effect on the negro's character as a slave in the South, so far as he was capable of comprehending and entertaining any sympathies, most of the slaves had a vague idea that success to the Union Army meant freedom for the slave and hence naturally they felt no ill toward this result, neither did they entertain ill will towards those who had held them in slavery, for contrary to the general impression of the North the negro slaves were treated with the greatest consideration, not harshly, but just the reverse. Any master who omitted to properly clothe and feed his slaves, to assiduously care for them in sickness and old age and to treat them justly and humanely was not only ostracised by his neighbors and acquaintances but his family suffered seriously


Page 47
in social positions so that no slaveholder was to be found who could weather the trials to which an acknowledged brutal master was subjected. This tenderness for the slave was so pronounced that all persons who occupied a dominant position with reference to him, such as the overseer or slave dealer were regarded as occupying an inferior position and were excluded from social relations with the slave holders, not from an imagined superiority of the latter, as sometimes alleged, but purely from the 'offensiveness' of their occupation. And I believe it can be said with the endorsement of all who knew that the negro as a whole was better cared for, and healthier and happier in sla"