{"product_id":"2940013580251","title":"THE DEATH SHOT","description":"CHAPTER ONE.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTWO SORTS OF SLAVE-OWNERS.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the old slave-owning times of the United States--happily now no\u003cbr\u003emore--there was much grievance to humanity; proud oppression upon the\u003cbr\u003eone side, with sad suffering on the other.  It may be true, that the\u003cbr\u003emajority of the slave proprietors were humane men; that some of them\u003cbr\u003ewere even philanthropic in their way, and inclined towards giving to the\u003cbr\u003eunholy institution a colour of _patriarchism_.  This idea--delusive, as\u003cbr\u003eintended to delude--is old as slavery itself; at the same time, modern\u003cbr\u003eas Mormonism, where it has had its latest, and coarsest illustration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThough it cannot be denied, that slavery in the States was,\u003cbr\u003ecomparatively, of a mild type, neither can it be questioned, that among\u003cbr\u003eAmerican masters occurred cases of lamentable harshness--even to\u003cbr\u003einhumanity.  There were slave-owners who were kind, and slave-owners who\u003cbr\u003ewere cruel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNot far from the town of Natchez, in the State of Mississippi, lived two\u003cbr\u003eplanters, whose lives illustrated the extremes of these distinct moral\u003cbr\u003etypes.  Though their estates lay contiguous, their characters were as\u003cbr\u003eopposite, as could well be conceived in the scale of manhood and\u003cbr\u003emorality.  Colonel Archibald Armstrong--a true Southerner of the old\u003cbr\u003eVirginian aristocracy, who had entered the Mississippi Valley before the\u003cbr\u003eChoctaw Indians evacuated it--was a model of the kind slave-master;\u003cbr\u003ewhile Ephraim Darke--a Massachusetts man, who had moved thither at a\u003cbr\u003emuch later period--was as fair a specimen of the cruel.  Coming from New\u003cbr\u003eEngland, of the purest stock of the Puritans--a people whose descendants\u003cbr\u003ehave made much sacrifice in the cause of negro emancipation--this about\u003cbr\u003eDarke may seem strange.  It is, notwithstanding, a common tale; one\u003cbr\u003ewhich no traveller through the Southern States can help hearing.  For\u003cbr\u003ethe Southerner will not fail to tell him, that the hardest task-master\u003cbr\u003eto the slave is either one, who has been himself a slave, or descended\u003cbr\u003efrom the Pilgrim Fathers, whose feet first touched American soil by the\u003cbr\u003eside of Plymouth Rock!","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47167906644208,"sku":"2940013580251","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013580251_p0.jpg?v=1763594018","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013580251","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}