of ours; by convincing all who read or study his book (our own children among them) that in defiance of all reasons to know the wrong of slavery, we argued before the war and fought in it, not from conviction of duty or loyalty to our constitutional rights and those of our children, not even from insulted and outraged manhood, but simply to hold the negro in possession.
We do not assert his insincerity; it may well be that he believed what he said on that point. He is, therefore, the more dangerous as teaching falsehood with all the force that belongs to the conviction of truth.
It will go far to establish our proposition as to Mr. Fiske's inability to see the truth when slavery and the war enter his field of view and the consequent entire unfitness of his "history" for school use, if we briefly examine other noted writings that have come from his hand. It is a maxim laid down by a famous philosopher and writer that children are more influenced by the spirit and the unexpressed opinions of the teacher than they are by the words they chance to hear from his lips. We, therefore, examine Mr. Fiske. His personality is in his history; the chapter and verse criticism of that book is in the able reports of Captain Bishop and Rev. Dr. Tucker, We turn to the latter half of the 191st page of his much-lauded "Old Virginia and Her Neighbors." It contains matter which will not only prove our criticism just, but furnish us occasion for much astonishment. Speaking of the slave-trade and its abolition, Mr. Fiske tells us that George Mason in his lifetime denounced the "infamous traffic" "in terms which were to be resented by his grandsons, when they fell from the lips of Wendell Phillips." All this we quote literally. A handsome antithesis and well proportioned sentence, you will observe. The author is not careful to present (we avoid saying that he is careful not to present) the true point of contrast. George Mason denounced as "infamous" the sale of free men into slavery and the horrors of the middle passage, and argued against slavery in Virginia on economic and social grounds. Wendell Phillips denounced the South and Southern slave-holders. Mr. Fiske's readers do not learn from him that this was the offence that we resented, and that with a just indigna--
