Let any ex-slave, uneducated, wanting information come to an educated colored man for it, and obtain it, he will not be really satisfied until he lays the matter before some white man, and if approved, then it is all right, but if condemned then the white man’s opinion is accepted and the other rejected; this holds good to-day, and in my opinion is one of the results of slavery, which I can only explain by stating that slave-holders considered it very low to lie to a slave, and would not do it under any circumstances, and had great contempt for another one who would purposely do so. I have known them to refuse to answer questions rather than tell a lie, when they could not afford to tell the truth. Many times the slave has wished that his master would lie, when he has told him that at a certain hour or upon a certain day he would punish him; for he knew he would get the promised flogging almost as surely as the day came. Sometimes he would be told, “I am doing this only to keep my word.” My own personal experience is, that in dealing with slaves the master was perfectly honorable and truthful, and would not cheat or practice deception in any way with them, and the slave knew that the master would not lie and therefore believed what he said.
I found by sad experience that the white men in a free state, especially in business transactions, were not as truthful as the slave-holders of Missouri, in dealing with colored people, a fact to which many colored men in Leavenworth and Atchison, Kansas, can testify, men like myself who have been deceived into buying a lot, and who, in installments had paid the entire price agreed upon. After having built a house thereon, in a few years they found that the land was owned by someone else.
I could give the names of several colored men in the cities named above, who lost their property in that way, and who were forced to vacate or pay a higher price for the land than at first. Men from the South tell me that that class of white men in that section, who were almost the soul of honor, in dealing with the colored people, is fast dying out, and the young men taking their places will lie to and cheat the ex-slave of his earnings right along, and do not display the honor of their fathers in such dealings.