I know little of politics.

I have grown up with the feeling that I must stay with my people through all things.

I must be kin by blood to half the white people in Charleston.

How could I desert them ?" "You couldn't," said Harry emphatically.
Colonel Leonidas Talbot smiled.

It is possible that, at the moment, he wished for the sanguine decision of youth, which could choose a side and find only wrong in the other.
"In my heart," he continued, "I do not wish to see the Union broken up, although the violence of New England orators and the raid of John Brown has appalled me.