over my head as Executrix of my Husband's property. I, a woman, acting for myself, & daughter, he a man & a Bank Officer, not daring enough to risk the investment of the money, which could easily have been done in Cotton, Real Estate, & a thousand other ways had he chosen to have taken the risk, but preferring to cast the responsibility on my side, he refuses to rec. payment, thus warding off a complete settlement of the debt. The war progresses. By Confederate forces I am compelled to abandon my beautiful homes on the Coast, elegant House, Mills, Barns, etc., all burned, a complete desolation of a magnificent property ensues. I find a home with my Family & Negroes, about 70 miles from the Coast, strenuously endeavor to support, cloth & feed the Negroes. When located there a sufficient time to begin to get comfortable, we prove to be in the line of March of Sherman's Army. We were again forced to leave houses, Barns, etc., all again devastated, burned & destroyed, & from affluence & luxuries, I am pomparatively (comparatively) without means, only the remains of once valuable Plantations, and a portion of City property saved by strenuous exertions, which now affords myself & children a support & home.

My Question now arises, Can this remnant of property be wrested from me? By an act of Legislature of South Carolina, the Negroes were declared free. Can it not be made a Question in Congress, so that we can be justified? I hold a Bill of Sale of said Negroes, declaring them to be mine, they & their Heirs for life. The contract on their side is violated & again in my perplexity I earnestly ask of you, Can I be made to pay this unjust debt?

To you I appeal for Council & advice on this momentous Question, craving your assistance & trusting that this communication may elicit from you a speedy reply, which I shall ever esteem a favor & honor.

Very Respectfully,

RUTH MARSHALL.

REVIEWS.

A POLITICAL HISTORY OF SLAVERY. Being an account of the Slavery Controversy from the earliest agitations in the eighteenth century to the close of the Reconstruction Period in America. By William Henry Smith. With an introduction by Whitelaw Reid. In two volumes. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1903. O., pp. I. xvi+350, II. iv+456, index, portrait of author.

Mr. Smith, the editor of the St. Clair Papers, was made the literary executor of President Hayes, whose early career had brought him into the thick of the anti-slavery agitation which preceded the organization of the Republican party. The present volumes were originally intended as an introduction to an edition of the Life and Works of President Hayes, but outgrowing their original scope, were prepared for publication after the death of the author in 1896 by his son and issued in the present form.

The avowed purpose of the work, according to the introduction, is to shear New England of a great part of the honor which she has claimed for herself (since she has had the greatest number of writers on this subject) in the antislavery struggle. The violence of Foster, the outbursts of Phillips and the vituperation of Garrison are censured and condemned. It seeks to redeem the Middle West from the curse denounced by the Confederate Congress at its last session against the Southern people in case of failure-that their history should be written by New England historians. It claims the chief honors for Charles Osborn and those who organized the opposition while "to another generation the idolatrous treatment of the pure abolition school which at the East appeared to follow the close of the war will seem little short of amazing."

These brave words by the editor of the Tribune present the work in the most favorable light and make pleasant reading for one who has not been reared within the influence of that universe whose sun and center is Boston. They are further emphasized when we remember that Mr. Smith was himself a man from the Middle West, that he was not. only an onlooker but a participant in the events which he describes and we are led to expect an exact, precise, minute, circumstantial account of the part taken by the great States of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois in the anti-slavery conflict. It was possible for Mr. Smith to have made an original contribution to the history of slavery and to have put all future historians in his debt; but he has done nothing of the kind. He has produced two ponderous tomes filled mostly with platitudes and the threadbare story of congressional contests which have been told time and again. Some of the matters here presented in great detail concern slavery, while others bear relations to that subject only as all other important events of that day can be made to show relations to that great central idea. The first chapter which deals with the rise of the anti-slavery idea is imperfect and shows great lack of knowledge when compared with the minute, full and luminous presentation of the same subject by Miss Mary Stoughton Locke in her Anti-Slavery in America prior to 1808. The later chapters, which present the phases of the subject with which Mr. Smith was more or less familiar, are uncritical and show not the spirit of the judge but of the partisan. Of works of this sort, undigested, illogical, uncritical and partisan we have had an abundant crop already. The capacity of the country is no doubt great enough for one more, but pray let us not try to beguile ourselves with the idea that this is history. Let us count each as but an additional brief to be estimated and weighed by the coming historian.

GOVERNOR WILLIAM TRYON AND HIS ADMINISTRATION IN THE PROVINCE OF NORTH CAROLINA, 1765-1771. By Marshall DeLancey Haywood. (Raleigh: A. Williams, 1903. Q., pp. 223, 4 ills., I map, cloth, $2.00 prepaid.)

"Do you know, sir, that your lenity on this occasion," writes Judge Maurice Moore to Governor Tryon, then promoted to New York, in regard to the trial and execution of the Regulators, "was less than that of the bloody Jeffreys in 1685? He condemned 500 persons, but saved the lives of 270." Tryon condemned twelve and saved six. "When several thousand men had been in open and armed insurrection against the colony, and had been guilty of all manner of excesses, only twelve were convicted," writes the author of this book (p. 145), "and the governor pardoned half of that small number." At the end of our Civil War when a million men had been in armed resistance not one was hanged for treason. Had the courts of the United States brought two thousand leading Confederates to trial for treason, had they been convicted and had Lincoln allowed the law to take its course, the mind of the South could not have conceived nor its tongue expressed the hatred in which he would have been held by unborn generations. And yet Lincoln would have been less guilty before the bar of History than the client for whom Mr. Haywood appears and in whose behalf he here presents such an excellent and eloquent brief.

All that can be said in behalf of Tryon has been said here; the oppression and injustice under which the Regulators suffered and against which they protested has been minimized; the kindness, the liberality, the forbearance, the culture, the eloquence and even the pity of Tryon are emphasized; the hideous tyranny of the Johnston act is not laid at the door of Tryon, but at that of the colonial leaders; the ignorance and riotous excesses of the mob are held up to publicity, and not only is Fanning pulled down from bad eminence "as the suggesting fiend or active demon when any specially

dark scenes were depicted" (p. 150), on which the older and ultra democratic writers had placed him, but Tryon is evolved as a sort of deus ex machina from whose benevolence all sorts of blessings would have flowed on the rebels, but they would not.

In dealing with the Regulators we regret to say that the work of Mr. Haywood lacks judicial poise. Not content with presenting Tryon in the most favorable light possible, he descends to invective and sarcasm, and so far forgets his judicial position as to tacitly assume that (1) the Regulators could get justice under the Johnston act which had been condemned, in part, in England as irreconcilable with the constitution; (2) and in the court of the very judges who had suffered violence at their hands! Great store is also laid on the fact that the Regulators were generally Tories in the Revolution. The men who led the patriot forces of North Carolina in 1776 were those who had defeated the Regulators in 1771. The men who forced the oath of allegiance down the throats of the Regulators in 1771 sought to make them break that oath in 1776. Only superhuman power or wonderful intelligence could have made the Regulators patriots.

Aside from the fact that his book in the Regulator's war is a special brief for Tryon, Mr. Haywood has produced a volume of much worth. It is really a history of the colony during Tryon's administration, 1765-71. Many little known events are recorded and it is especially rich in biographical and genealogical material, much of it obtained at first hand from English sources. In manner of presentation, in comprehensive knowledge of the sources and in scientific treatment it commands the highest praise. There is an exhaustive index.

It cannot be said that this book settles the question as to the party which was right in 1771, but this thorough and exhaustive piece of work brings us measurably nearer the