They responded with deep expressions of their devotion and their faith.
With the greatest sorrow of life darkening his soul he left next day for
his inauguration at Montgomery.
CHAPTER IX
THE OLD REGIME
Socola left Briarfield with the assurance of the President-elect of the
Confederacy that he might spend a week with the Bartons and yet be in
ample time for the inauguration at Montgomery.
He boarded the steamer at the Davis landing and floated lazily down to
Baton Rouge.
From Briarfield he carried an overwhelming impression of the folly of
Slavery from its economic point of view. The thing which amazed his
orderly New England mind was the confusion, the waste, the sentimental
extravagance, the sheer idiocy of the slave system of labor as
contrasted with the free labor of the North.
The one symbol before his vivid imagination was the sight of old Uncle
Bob and Aunt Rhinah seated in their rocking chairs gravely listening to
the patriarchal farewell of their master. The ancient seers dreamed of
Nirvana. These two wonderful old Africans had surely found it in the new
world. No wave of trouble could ever roll across their peaceful breasts
so long as their lord and master lived. He was their king, their
protector, their physician, their almoner, their friend.
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