The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964 Page: 492
672 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
He had come to Texas by way of Louisiana and to Louisiana
by way of Massachusetts, where he had been born in 1812. In
New England he had learned to hate slavery in the abstract; in
Louisiana, where he had studied law, he had learned to hate it
more concretely. As a child he had once met the "peculiar insti-
tution" face to face in the form of four fugitive slaves who had
sought lodging at his home. "These are my brothers," he had said,
"and we have beds enough in the house, for I will give up my bed,
or will sleep with them." Then, in his sister-in-law's home in
Louisiana he had come to know more of the Negro slaves and
those who oppressed them. In the bluffs and gulches of the
Mississippi's banks, among the cypress swamps draped with Span-
ish moss, on the cotton and sugar cane plantations of the South,
in the woods and forests where mockingbirds sang and magnolias
bloomed, he had seen the Negroes driving yokes of oxen, and
the "powerful intuition against oppression ... which had planted
him on the side of the four fugitive slaves when a mere child"
developed into a more powerful conviction that slavery was de-
moralizing and abhorrent.
Pearl Andrews was a Northerner who understood the South.
He had been present at that transition period in the 183o's when,
with the growth of anti-slavery sentiment in the North, the mood
of the Southern slaveholders had changed from regret for the
necessity of slavery to a militant defense of the institution. In
his words:
There have been two distinct periods of .. Slavery at the
South, the one before and the other after it stood in the face of
an organized anti-slavery sentiment at the North. I arrived at the
South at the exact transition or turning-point between the two
periods, .. I had ample opportunity to observe the character of
the institution in its quiescent mood. At that time it was not un-
common to hear slavery deplored .. even by wealthy planters..
It was regretted as other people regret poverty or crime;
But all this was dissolved like a dream instantly by the first
earnest shock of a real anti-slavery sentiment at the North;
All disguises were thrown off. Slavery came rapidly to be proclaimed
a divine institution; . the second stage of the life of slavery in
the United States of America had begun. I was present and wit-
nessed the transition and knew well what it meant.492
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964, periodical, 1964; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101197/m1/570/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.