The
slaves were treated humanely, their material wants were cared for by
their owners with a care that can only be called loving, and their
spiritual welfare was the frequent concern in particular of the mistress
of the house.
In his schoolboy days, Mark Twain had no aversion to slavery. He wasn't
even aware that there was anything wrong about it. He never heard it
condemned by acquaintances or in the local papers. And as for the
preachers, they taught that God approved slavery, and cited Biblical
passages in support of that view. If the slaves themselves were averse
to it, at least they kept discreetly silent on the subject. He seldom
saw a slave misused--on the farm, never. But when he was brought face
to face with Sandy, the little slave forcibly separated from his family,
it made a deep impression upon his consciousness. It was this
deplorable evil of the system, this unnatural and inhuman forcible
separation of the members of the same family, the one from the other,
that convinced him of the injustice of slavery; though this vision, as
has been pointed out by Mr.
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