CONCLUSION.



                  CHAPTER XX.

                  CONCLUSION.

  Tias is not a work of fiction. It is a record of facts,
and therefore the reader will not expect me to dispose
of its various characters on artistic principles-that is,
lay them away in one of those final receptacles for the
creations of the romancer-the grave and matrimony.
Death has been among them, but nearly all are yet do-
ing their work in this breathing, busy world.
  The characters I have introduced are real. They are
not drawn with the pencil of fancy, nor, I trust, colored
with the tints of prejudice. The scenes I have described
are true. I have taken some liberties with the names of
persons and places, and, in a few instances, altered dates;
but the events themselves occurred under my own obser-
vation. No one acquainted with the section of country
I have described, or familiar with the characters I have
delineated, will question this statement. Lest some one
who has not seen the slave and the poor white man of
the South, as he actually is, should deem my picture
overdrawn, I will say that " the half has not been told !"
If the whole were related-if the Southern system, in
all its naked ugliness, were fully exposed-the truth



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