But he decided at last, influenced not so much by need of money as by knowing how much real good the exchange of ownership would be to the two young girls.

In return for Rocket, Alice should have Muggins, while for Lulu she might give what she liked.
"Heaven knows," he added, "it is not my nature to hold any one in bondage, and I shall gladly hail the day which sees the negro free.

But our slaves are our property.

Take them from us and we are ruined wholly.
Miss Johnson, do you honestly believe that one in forty of those Northern abolitionists would deliberately give up ten--twenty--fifty thousand dollars, just because the thing valued at that was man and not beast?
No, indeed.

Southern people, born and brought up in the midst of slavery, can't see it as the North does, and there's where the mischief lies." He had wandered from Lulu and Muggins to the subject which then, far more than the North believed, was agitating the Southern mind.