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reworking of abolitionist propaganda.

Judge George L. Christian observed,

In the first place slavery, as it existed in the South, was patriarchal in its character; the slaves (servants, as we called them) were regarded and treated as members of the families to which they severally belonged; with rare exceptions, they were treated with kindness and consideration, and frequently the relations between the slave and his owner, were those of real affection and confidence.

Prior to the War, the South was visited many times by journalists from the North, as well as from Europe . The purpose of their visits was to send back first-hand reports on the nature of the South in general, and of slavery in particular. In the 1840's the Englishman, Sir Charles Lyell, traveled through the nation and published the results of his observations in Travels in North America in the Years 1841-1842. Lyell's description of slavery as it operated in the South was widely publicized in the North and pointedly contradicted the abolitionist propaganda. Lyell noted the remarkable affection that existed between master and slave, and on the fact that he found the slaves "better fed than a large part of the laboring class of Europe ." There were no whips, chains, or accounts of gross mistreatment in Lyell's picture.  To Lyell, slavery was a mild, kindly, if inefficient and uneconomical, institution.

This view was confirmed by others including fellow Britisher, the Earl of Carlisle, James Strictland, and prominently by the American northerner, Frederick Law Olmstead, who was staunchly against slavery. This sober testimony was ignored in favor of abolitionist rant. But the people of the North in the 19th century have not been the only ones to ignore facts. The same problem continues today. Whenever a people decide to overlook the facts, however, they sometimes discover that there is a great deal to overlook.

The Old South was a caste society, but not a compartmentalized society. There were specific roles for blacks and whites, and each "knew their place" as it were, but what is often overlooked is the high level of interaction between the races which was a common and everyday experience.

Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world. The credit for this must go to the predominance of Christianity. The gospel enabled men who were distinct in nearly every way, to live and work together, to be friends and often intimates. This happened to such an extent that moderns indoctrinated on "civil rights" propaganda would be thunderstruck to know the half of it.

During the New Deal, President Roosevelt commissioned a number of journalists to interview former slaves, and record the results. The results of this project collected in the multi-volume Slave Narratives surprised everyone with preconceived notions of the slave institution. The reports did not fit with the established and reigning orthodoxy, and consequently the Slave Narratives have been largely ignored ever since. One would think that the verbal testimony of over 2,300 former slaves would be a fairly important piece of information when it comes to forming our views of the institution as it really functioned. After all, these were interviews with former slaves, not with former masters. But surprisingly (i.e., surprising to those who still think scholars are neutral and led by nothing more than an