A re-print of the author's 1889 revision of the 1881 original. The author engages in a social analysis of the plight of African-Americans of 1881, not long after emancipation and before the prevalence of Jim Crow laws, a small period of time in which African-Americans could easily vote.

The author is a Southern liberal, one who used to support slavery but turned and saw its ills. The author believed that his fellow white Americans, Northern and Southern, had a moral obligation to better the condition of the African-Americans in the South, particularly in terms of education. As a Methodist bishop, the author believed firmly in God's providence and therefore sought to find some kind of providential reason for the forced movement, slavery, and then emancipation of the slaves, and believed that it was for the furtherance of the Gospel among the African-Americans, some of whom who could then take the Gospel back to their original African lands.

The author would be considered a racist today, but no more so than pretty much everyone of his day: they all believed in the superiority of the "Anglo-Saxon race." To that end, the author's attitude is extremely patronizing toward his African-American fellow-citizens. The author is able to admit the humiliation of the South in the Civil War and the necessary consequences that came from it, yet remains proud enough to defend the Southerners on many fronts and to provide a more rosy than likely accurate picture of his fellow white Southerners of his day.

The 1889 revision includes the author's response to an article from a Senator Eustis and many favorable responses to the author's original response.

This book is a valuable counterweight to the standard picture of the post-war South, reminding us that not every white person hated or feared African-Americans nor desired to lynch them or do them harm, and that many, as far as they were able, were sympathetic toward the African-Americans and sought their betterment. A most helpful primary source for the post-war South. ( )