She remembered how deeply-rooted in the Southern mind was the idea
that slavery was a social necessity. She did not believe, as so
many had insisted, that it was founded merely in greed. She believed
that it was with sincere conviction that a leading journal had
declared: "The evils of free society are insufferable. Free society
must fail and give way to a _class society_--a social system
old as the world, universal as man."
She knew that the leader of a would-be nation had declared: "A
thousand must die as slaves or paupers in order that one gentleman
may live. Yet they are cheap to any nation, even at that price."
So she feared that the victors in the _post-bellum_ strife
which was raging around her would succeed, for a time at least, in
establishing this ideal "class society." While the Nation slumbered
in indifference, she feared that these men, still full of the spirit
of slavery, in the very name of law and order, under the pretense
of decency and justice, would re-bind those whose feet had just
begun to tread the path of liberty with shackles only less onerous
than those which had been dashed from their limbs by red-handed
war. As she thought of these things she read the following words
from the pen of one who had carefully watched the process of
"redemption," and had noted its results and tendency--not bitterly
and angrily, as she had done, but coolly and approvingly:
"We would like to engrave a prophecy on stone, to be read of generations
in the future.
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