I am a Northern woman, she replied, so I was always for the Union, and am exceedingly glad that the Southerners were beaten and the slaves set free. Slavery was a horrible thing and a disgrace to the country.

But, I said, from all the accounts one hears, it seems that the Negroes in the South were better off before the war as slaves than they are now as free people.

Oh, but they are free now, and that is the great point. No doubt things are bad at present, but they will improve in time.

I thought that, as a rule, the slaves were well-treated by their owners.

So they were in many cases, she replied, but there was no security for them; there was always the chance of their being sold to strange people; and then wives were separated from their husbands, and children from their parents. Besides, there were many owners who treated their slaves badly-working them hard, feeding them scantily and whipping them cruelly for the least offense. Then again, slaves had no rights of any sort. The girls and women, if light colored and pretty, were not allowed to be virtuous, even if they wished to be. They were obliged to give themselves up to the embraces of their masters, and, if a woman dared to object, she was severely whipped.

Oh, surely you must be mistaken, I observed. No, I am not. I know what I am talking about, for I lived in a slave state before the war, and I had special opportunities for finding out all about slavery and the distressing things connected with it.

Was it a common thing for women to be whipped? I asked.

Yes; I do not suppose that there was a single plantation in the whole of the South where the female slaves were not whipped. Of course, on some plantations there was more whipping than on others. And what made the thing more horrid was the fact that the whippings were always inflicted by men, and very often in the most public way.