That all negroes were not treated badly, or that slavery invariably meant misery, can be easily proved by any one who takes the trouble to investigate, even in the most superficial manner.  When the news of emancipation gradually spread through the remote regions of the South, there were hundreds and probably thousands of negroes who declined absolutely to take advantage of the freedom given them.  Many most pathetic cases of devotion and love were made manifest.  Even to-day there are numbers of aged colored men and women who are remaining with their old-time owners and declining to regard emancipation as logical or reasonable.

Not long ago, a Northern writer while traveling through the South found an aged negro, whom he approached with a view to getting some interesting passages of local history.  To his surprise he found that the old man had but one idea.  That idea was that it was his duty to take care of and preserve his old master’s grave.  When the war broke out, the old hero was the body-servant or valet of a man, who, from the very first, was in the thick of the fight against the North.  The colored man followed his soldier-master from place to place, and when a Northern bullet put an end to the career of the master, the servant reverently conveyed the body back to the old home, superintended the interment, and commenced a daily routine of watching, which for more than thirty years he had never varied.

All the relatives of the deceased had left the neighborhood years before, and the faithful old negro was the only one left to watch over the grave and keep the flowers that were growing on it in good condition.  As far as could be learned from local gossip, the old fellow had no visible means of subsistence, securing what little he needed to eat in exchange for odd jobs around neighboring houses.  No one seemed to know where he slept, or seemed to regard the matter as of any consequence.  There was about the jet black hero, however, an air of absolute happiness, added to an obvious sense of pride at the performance of his self-imposed and very loving task.

Instances of this kind could be multiplied almost without end.  The negro as a free man and citizen retains many of the most prominent characteristics which marked his career in the days before the war.  Now and again one hears of a negro committing suicide.  Such an event, however, is almost as rare as resignation of an office-holder or the death of an annuitant.  Indifference to suffering and a keen appreciation of pleasure, make prolonged grief very unusual among Afro-Americans, and in consequence their lives are comparatively joyous.