Diddie, Dumps, and Tot : Or, Plantation Child-Life

It is Fiction short story type of book. The primary object the idea of keeping alive many of the old stories, legends, traditions, games, hymns, and superstitions of the Southern slaves, which, with this generation of negroes, will pass away. There are now no more dear old "Mammies" and "Aunties" in our nurseries, no more good old "Uncles" in the workshops, to tell the children those old tales that have been told to our mothers and grandmothers for generations the stories that kept our fathers and grandfathers quiet at night, and induced them to go early to bed that they might hear them the sooner. Nor does my little book pretend to be any defence of slavery. I know not whether it was right or wrong (there are many pros and cons on that subject); but it was the law of the land, made by statesmen from the North as well as the South, long before my day, or my father's or grandfather's day; and, born under that law a slave holder, and the descendant of slave holders, raised in the heart of the cotton section, surrounded by negroes from my earliest infancy, "I KNOW whereof I do speak;" and it is to tell of the pleasant and happy relations that existed between master and slave that I write this story of "Diddie, Dumps, and Tot". The stories, plantation games, and hymns are just as I heard them in my childhood.