Men cannot awaken from a Rip Van Winkle slumber of a hundred years and grasp at once the altered conditions which flash upon them.

The awakening is terrific, appalling, staggering.
When a man has been confined for long years in a dark dungeon he has not trouble in discerning objects about him which, when he first entered his dungeon, were indistinct or invisible to him.

So when he is brought suddenly to the strong light of the sun the effulgence overmasters him, and he is blind as a bat.

But slowly and painfully he becomes accustomed to the transition from absolute darkness to absolute light, and then nature wears to his vision her naturally gay and winsome appearance.

So with the slave.