In 1857 the tone of
nearly everybody with whom I came in contact, however veiled by
politeness, was in some degree irritable and defiant. My host and I
were never long before the evening fire without my finding that he
was impatient to talk about slavery, that he suspected me of
disliking it, and yet that he wished to have me understand that he
did not care, and that nobody at the South cared two cents what I
thought about it, and that it was a little impertinent in me, who
knew so little of the negro, to have any opinion about it at all. I
was obliged, too, to confess inwardly that there was a good deal of
justification for his bad temper. There was I, a curious stranger,
roving through his country and eating at his board, and all the
while secretly or openly criticising or condemning his relations
with his laborers and servants, and, in fact, the whole scheme of
his domestic life. I was not a pleasant companion, and nothing could
make me one, and no matter on what themes our talk ran, it was
colored by our opinions on the institution.
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